Table Of ContentRadical
Feminist
Therapy
Radical
Feminist
Therapy
BONNIE BURSTOW
SAGE Publications
International Educational und Professional Publisher
Newbury Park London New Delhi
Copyright 0 1992 by Bonnie Burstow.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any
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Printed in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Main entry under title:
Burstow, Bonnie, 1945-
Radical feminist therapy :working in the context of violence /
Bonnie Burstow.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-8039-4787-9 (cloth). -ISBN 0-8039-4788-7 (pbk.)
1. Abused women-North America. 2. Feminist therapy-North
America. 3. Women-North America-Crimes against. I. Title.
HV6250.4.W65B87 1992
155.6’336~20 92- 30005
CIP
97 98 99 00 01 02 03 10 9 8 7 6 5 4
Sage Production Editor: Tara S. Mead
Contents
Acknowledgments vii
Introduction viii
1 The Radical Feminist Foundations 1
Woman as Body-Physical Kolation 3
Woman as Body-Labor Exploitation 7
Upbringing 10
Dividing Woman From Woman 11
Later Years 16
Resistance 16
2 Psychiatry 21
Re History 22
Psychiatry and Women Today 33
3 Basics and Beginnings 40
Questions to Ask Ourselves 43
CounseIor Ethics
47
4 General Empowerment Work 51
Scripts 56
Strengtheningrnepairing the Bond With Womankind 60
Working Wth the Body 61
Depression 63
Idenliry and Action 64
5 Difference: Working With ... 66
Lesbians 66
Native Women 72
African American Women 78
Jewish Women 83
Immigrant Women 89
Women With Disabilities 92
6 Problematic Temtory 98
Heterosexual Couples 98
The Family 104
7 Working With Adult Survivors of Childhood Sexual Abuse 109
Terminology 109
The Work 113
Other Resources 144
The Special Situation of Ritual Abuse 145
8 Extreme Abuse by Male Partner 148
Deeper Work 156
The Political Overview 157
Telling and Creating a Support Network 158
Substantially Changing or Getting Out of the Abusive Situation 159
The Legal Route 163
Political Work 165
9 Working With Women Subjected To. . . 167
Extreme Abuse by Female Partner 167
Abuse by Pimps 172
Stranger Rape and Date Rape 175
Sexual Kolation by Therapists 177
10 Self-Mutilation 187
Shelter or Residence Work 200
11 Troubled Eating 202
Anorexia 204
Bulimia 211
“0ver”weight and “0ver”eating 219
12 Drinking Problems 224
Self-Help-A.A. and Others 232
13 Working With Psychiatric Survivors 235
Details of the Counseling 241
The Larger Commitment 264
14 Clients WhoAre Considering Ending Their Lives 267
Direct Practice 275
Attending to Ourselves 28 1
Appendix: Example of a Client Handout 283
Working Together 283
Education 283
Experience 283
Overail Perspective 284
Approaches 284
Guidelines, General Expectations, Invitations, and Requests 284
References 286
Index 29 1
About the Author 302
Acknowledgments
As with almost everything that is worthwhile, many wonderful women have
helped make this book possible.
The single largest contribution is from Kali Munro. Kali’s uncompromising
feminism instructs me. Kali is the only other person I know who has clearly
integrated feminist therapy and antipsychiatry; it was a relief to have had her to
talk with throughout the long two and a half years of writing. Thank you for
painstakingly reading each chapter as it was written and for offering sensitive
and astute feedback. Most of all, thank you for being there.
Linda Advocaat scrupulously read each section as it was written and provided
ongoing, down-to-earth feedback. Margot Smith, as always, encouraged me,
was supportive, and cared about what I was doing.
My editor at Sage was a “goddess-sent.” She recognized the value of the
manuscript, moved with lightning speed, and had the guts to back a book that
challenges so much. I in debt as well to Don Weitz for his uncompromising
am
antipsychiatry understanding and solidarity.
My students and supervisees throughout the years have guided me. The
questions and dilemmas of, to name just a few, Kathy Canter, Robin Black, Jan
Peltier, and Carol-Anne O’Brien gave me further insight into what needed to be
written. The Native and immigrant students at Winnipeg Education Centre and
the program itself taught me about work with Natives and immigrants. Special
thanks to Kay Johnson and the other women of color at Carleton University who
“confronted the hell out of all faculty.” It is women of color who have taught me
the most about difference.
Finally and most particularly, I would like to acknowledge the contribution
of clients over the years. While I cannot name them for reasons of confiden-
my
tiality, I know and they know that they have taught me what no one else
conceivably could. It is to them-as women who resist, as survivors, as war-
riors-that I dedicate this book.
vii
Introduction
The context in which this is written is the fundamental unhappiness and
book
alienation of women. I am referring here not simply to the angst and pain that
are inevitable parts of our human condition or primarily to the unhappiness that
arises from individual circumstance. It is that unnecessary yet unavoidable,
individual yet common, suffering born of the patriarchy and other systemic
oppression.
Civilization as we know it is based on the violation and domination of
subordinates by elites. All women are subordinate. Working-class women,
women of color, lesbians, and women with disabilities are doubly or triply
oppressed. Civilization is based as well on male hegemony, that is. on viewing,
understanding, and naming the world from a rigidly male elite point of view and
seeing this view itself as something that is neutral and given in the nature of
things.
Violation, domination, and hegemony are common to all oppression. All
oppression is heinous, dehumanizing, and confusing. And all has its own special
torments and deceptions. What is especially insidious and psychologically
destructive about sexism is its closeness. We do not have distance from it. It is
in our homes and in our own families from the earliest years, and it comes under
such baffling and seductive disguises as nurturance and romantic love. We are
so mystified by it and caught up in it right from the start that it takes an
incredible struggle for us to win back even the beginnings of our lost humanity.
For a long time, individually and collectively, women have been waging this
struggle. Feminist therapy or counseling may be seen as one small but very real
part of the fight.
Feminist therapy is rooted in women’s knowledge, in women’s help and ways
of help, The word fherupycomes from the Greek word meaning “to attend” or
“to minister” and only derivatively became connected with medicine. Our
viii
Introduction ix
ancestors or precursors are women who attended to others. We date back to the
witches, the midwives, the wise women who defied the patriarchy and brought
women’s help to those who wanted it. It dates beyond the patriarchy itself to the
spiritual women of all classes and colors who were compassionate and gave
counsel.
The immediate context for the emergence of feminist therapy was the growth
of the women’s movement. The larger context is the obscuring of our roots by
male and malelike professionals and a growing dissatisfaction with the increas-
ingly patriarchal counseling that resulted. Sadly, for some time now, especially
in the Westem world, enormously high percentage of women who “give
an
counsel” have taken training from and identified with the androcentric, racist,
and classist “mental health establishment.” The woman’s movement provided
an opportunity to begin reexamining and disidentifying from that establish-
ment. Individual women both inside and outside consciousness-raising groups
targeted the “mental health system” as a particularly misogynous and oppres-
sive substructure. Feminist researchers began studying the area. Their findings
left us in little doubt. The so-called “mental health system” served the interest
of the patriarchy; that is, it pathologized the socially created problems that
women face and reinforced the sex roles that the patriarchy prescribes.
A particularly influential study that helped substantiate the claims of those of
us who denounced the “help” given by “mental health professionals” is Inge
Broverman’s now classical research into sex role stereotyping by psychiatrists,
psychologists, and social workers (see Broverman, Broverman. & Clarkson,
1970, pp. 1-7). The research was based on a questionnaire that contained
listings of bipolar traits associated with sex role stereotypes-such bipolar sets
as “very assertivehot at all assertive.” The research indicated that both male
and female clinicians equate “socially competent adult” with “socially compe-
tent man” and see women as socially competent only when not acting like a
competent adult. Feminists were quick to point out the implications of
Broverman’s study. Whether conducted by men or by women, therapy was a
patriarchal institution whose vision and goals contributed to the infantilization
and disempowering of women.
A second important study is by Phyllis Chesler. In her book Women and
Madness, Chesler (1972)demonstrated psychiatry’s role in the subordination of
women. She saw psychiatry as a fundamentally androcentric institution whose
purpose is to enforce sex role stereotypes. She argued convincingly that women
are in double jeopardy: Women are institutionalized both for veering from their
socially proscribed role and for overly conforming to it. Women of color are
particularly jeopardized.
These denunciations and this research helped clarify the importance of
pioneering a different approach to counseling even though the approach did not
highlight the significance of our earlier history. It became abundantly apparent
