Women and Power: Perspectives for Family Therapy

"Is power what women want?" With this challenging question Thelma Jean Goodrich opens this book. She goes on to point out that this is not an innocent question, since it "reflects back on the context that produces it," that it may cause embarrassment in exposing a hierarchical ordering of the sexes, and that, in requiring consideration of posible yearnings among subordinnates for power, it "engenders fear and consternation for men, fear and confusio for women.".... In addition to Goodrich's chapter, the opening section includes chapters by Jean Baker Miller and Linda Webb-Watson on the social and political context. Romance is the topic of the second section, with penetrating discussions by Rachel Hare-Musitin and Virginia Goldner. In the third section Cheryl Rampage and Joan Laird shows how women gain personal authority through self-stories and ritual. The fourth section focuses of family therapy, with chapters by William Doherty, Nadine Kaslow and Alice S. Carter, and Judith Myers Avis. The final section departs from the standard chapter format to present very brief clinical vignettes and observations from fourteen well-known family therapists. Each highlights a particular family situation that pushed the clinician to reexamine assumptions and practices around women and power. ---excerpts from books dustjacket