Burman, E. (ed) (1990) Feminists and Psychological Practice . London: Sage.
PART TWO
CHANGING DEFINITIONS OF PSYCHOLOGICAL KNOWLEDGE
[pp. 73-75]
The contributions in this part of the book show how feminist practice transforms conventional definitions of psychology in terms of what that knowledge is, its concepts and methods, and the changed relationships this involves.
Corinne Squire contrasts the expanding (feminist) market for psychological treatments of women’s lives with the developing critique emerging from feminist psychologists of the very concepts those ‘popular’ accounts deploy. Taking up the oppositional character of feminist teaching alluded to in previous chapters, she explores how her feminist approach to teaching psychology generates and coexists with other critical approaches. A feminist commitment tends to dissolve psychology as a field of study, incorporating perspectives and criteria from outside the realm of what is traditionally defined as the ‘psychological’, and advances alternative methodologies and explanations. She highlights the contradictions faced by feminist teachers positioned simultaneously as both experts and critics within ‘the system’ (be it psychology or the
Women’s Movement). She argues for the need to theorize clearly the relation between teacher and student in terms of what each party can contribute to the ‘psychology education’ learning experience. By this means the teacher will be better positioned to empower the students through psychology, develop their feminist critique of psychology and will also be enabled herself to be open to the perspectives of her students, perspectives which are less constrained by institutional ties. The sense in which a course is ‘antipsychological’ depends on both the prior understanding of psychology and the experiences the students bring to the course. This does not happen in uniform ways.
Commenting on her own teaching experience, Corinne Squire suggests that while for some women a feminist re-reading of psychology takes the form of validating and extending the domain of their experiences as women, for others it gives rise to a general critique of psychology. The way is opened up then for ‘psychology education’ to become a general tool of feminist enquiry as well as promoting a feminist re-working and reevaluation of the psychology.
Ann Phoenix takes up this interrogation of both feminist and psychological practices through an account of work on early motherhood. She draws attention to the importance of processes involved not only in ‘data collection’, but also the procedures of
[74] support and accountability set up within a research team. Here the issues include not only who does the research and how it is conducted, but also who controls what happens to the material and what questions are investigated. All too often women researchers are employed on projects to carry out interviews whose rationale they have played no part in developing. The status of the ‘conversations’ that research with women by women has come to assume is shown to be problematic for both parties, as structural power relations are brought into research relationships through the inevitable roles it sets up as well as those of ‘race’ class, age and gender inequalities. There is thus a double challenge for feminists in psychology; just as the different positions of black and white women give

rise to different feminisms, so feminist methodologies can also be diverse. In terms of practice, this account from ‘social research’ asserts the need to reclaim ‘psychology’ as a legitimate domain for feminist activity and enquiry by highlighting how there are still, albeit constrained, spaces within which progressive work can be carried out.
In the next contribution, Maye Taylor draws on her experience as a therapist to outline how feminist clinicians can use, challenge and change traditional psychotherapy. The feminist project to empower the woman ‘client’ rejects the standard intrapsychic interpretation of the problems brought to therapy, but takes these as a real reflection of her experience of oppression and subordination. According reality to a woman’s fears carries particular theoretical significance in reinterpreting traditional accounts of incest, sexual assault and ‘symptoms of paranoia’. Maye Taylor goes on to analyse how gendertypical roles give rise to the depression, despair and low self-esteem that characterize women’s mental distress. She outlines the specific opportunities and advantages that a woman to woman service can provide. In particular this involves acknowledging and harnessing, rather than avoiding as in traditional practice, the power of both transference and counter-transference relations, using the common identification and experiences of both woman therapist and woman client to build a therapeutic alliance which can secure the woman’s sense of her own separateness, autonomy and self-worth.
So far the feminist psychologist is depicted as occupying a precarious position, sifting through and appropriating features of research and teaching that validate or explore women’s experience, or seeking less hostile environments in which to do women-friendly work. The problem with this last position is that it leaves the definition and problem with this last position is that it leaves the definition and boundary of psychology intact. Celia Kitzinger highlights how the current project of feminist psychology is inherently contradictory: while feminism is committed to political activity and change psychology is rooted in the scientific discourse of objectivity and [75] detachment. She illustrates the challenge of feminism through reviewers’ responses to papers she has submitted for publication and feedback from job applications, where politics is ruled out of the psychological arena. She extends the feminist challenge to psychology beyond the question of methodology - indeed she indicates how the
‘hard/soft’ polarization of quantitative and qualitative maps uneasily on to the psychiatric and sociological research on lesbians and gay men. Here we see that ‘soft’ research is not necessarily progressive, and if uncritically adopted as the criterion of feminist research may also serve to essentialize gender stereotypes.
What emerges is that the dangers for feminist psychology are twofold. On the one hand the expanding feminist audience for psychology incorporates notions of ego strengthening and identity formation as strategies towards the empowerment of women without questioning the political adequacy of their theoretical basis - and in particular the underlying heterosexism of this failure to critique psychology. On the other hand, as feminist psychologists we have to ask what it means to expunge politics from our organizations and theories, and what the significance is of the absence of writing by feminist psychologists in feminist journals. Overall Celia Kitzinger points out the limitations of posing the dilemmas facing feminist psychologists solely in the individualistic terms of personal ethical choices, arguing instead that we need to take a wider perspective on the definition and effects of psychology in order to be vigilant about what our involvement in psychology is doing to our feminism. As she concludes, we need

to theorize clearly what our role is as feminist psychologists - we work as feminists within psychology, commenting upon its uses and effects on women, and use our involvement in psychology to demystify it for feminists and critique its depoliticizing effects. [End of page 75]