Feminist Psychology
“What is” socially is natural, universal, and healthy
more typically, “What just was”
Stephanie Coontz, the way we never were.
Essentialism
Examples of it popping up
Problems with it
Start with Horney’s criticisms
When we do the Broverman exercise
Note how insecurity and dependence are/were positive traits for women
Magnifying the basic conflict - helpless
Nurhan’s aritce on scoring a wife
Men weren’t scored
Focus on the semi-permeable membrane
Include some first wave feminism stuff:
Men standing up in congress: if women go to school, it will destroy their
reproductive organs. Their constitution is too frail for heavy thinking.
Definition of feminism:
Belief in equality for all.
Not: women over men, payback belief.
Violence & Rape
Time to research?
Feminization of poverty
Poor pay
With the kids
Lack of social strucutre
Connection & Disconnection
Erikson – identity and relationship
Stone – identity through relationship
Self:
From who am I? Who are you?
To: How do I move toward you, move away from you
Bring myself to our relationship.
Find out who I am in the relationship – what does this mean?
Sense of connection and disconnection:
Connection:
Growth through and toward relationship
“Doing” “acting” and “working” often separated from relating…
if talk about relationships, assumption is there isn’t work getting done.
Learn new ways of being
Desire to continue relating
Get two sides of relationship
Learn how to be like them
Be complementary
From Judith Jordan, Meaning of Mutuality
Growth through and toward relationship
Being avaliable to be changed, and to be willing to influence another
Not exactly it
There’s somewhere else I use this as definition of a good relationship
Special awareness of the other’s subjective experience
Wholeness of other person
Continual re-attunement
It’s not merging – different than co-dependent
Develop empathy – understand other
Then appreciate differentness
Then encourage those qualities that make that person unique
When it works:
Feel self understood / accepted
Transcend self
Skills / components:
Develop empathy – this is active listening
Share self
Acknowledge own needs w/o manipulating other
Value process
Establish interacting pattern, not just a trade – process of relating is valued
Remember – triangle : relationships – stuff is going on,
Not just me and you, me and you and we go clubbing, we play golf together, eat
at restaurant, go to a family reunion…
My experinece of the stuff / object / activity is transformed by experiencing it in
the middle of the relationships
Why it’s needed
Relationship primarily talked aobut in mother-child, then left
Parental bond isn’t by-product of need satisfaction (e.g. Ainsworth)
Different than Freud, etc.
Other not just a place for projections, transferences or objects to fulfill desires
(discharge of one’s instinctual impulses)
Most psych models of relating – social exchange theory – don’t value the process of
relating
Different than Rogers – 2 people there – share self
He has piece in be genuine, but it’s still different
Not a static mirroring process
Developing it
From – Dominance / Submission TO Turn taking (social exchange) TO
Together/intersubjective
Lots from development, especially Stan Tatkin
Regulation of mutual exchange
e.g. children initiating and terminating contact
Stern, etc.
Emotional regulation – connect together
Cognitive exploration
Attachment theory still tends to be one sided – you talk about the child’s attachment to
parent – in adults
From Film Love’s Labors:
Great examples
Example of mother - child facial interaction
2 month old
mom takes cues from child
“Such a busy day”
She responds
Still face - parent still, kid trying
Notice the baby cycling through his cues, if one doesn’t work…
Does he eventually try to
private style of play
as fast as you can --- he aah - so she accentuates
example of social referencing with strange music
notice how he keeps sending the same signal…
I’m not sure…I’m not sure...ok
Then – object permanence
Then peek-a-boo – the new skill is incorporated, extended, explored through
Adult Stuff
Excerpt from Adult Attachment Inventory
Some sample questions from the AAI are:
1.
I'd like you to choose five adjectives that
reflect your childhood relationship with your mother.
This might take some time, and then I'm going to ask
you why you chose them. (Repeated for father)
2.
To which parent did you feel closest and
why? Why isn't there this feeling with the other
parent?
3.
you do?
When you were upset as a child, what would
4.
What is the first time you remember being
separated from your parents? How did you and they
respond?
Excerpt from Stan Tatkin
Cindy and Bobby are upstairs getting ready for bed.
Knowing that Cindy is interested in business ideas,
Bobby reads her something he read in a magazine. A light
bulb goes off in her head. Without saying a
word, Cindy goes downstairs while Bobby is still reading to
her. She grabs a pen and paper to write the
idea down. She comes back upstairs to find Bobby who is
now angry. She is surprised by his reaction and
unaware of having done anything wrong. Bobby
complains: she was rude for walking out of him while he
was telling her something. He’s angry because she seems
to do this a lot in other instances. He feels
dismissed and unimportant. Cindy, operating within a
one‐ person psychological system, "forgot" that she
was with another person. Never occurring to her to share
her thoughts about the idea with her partner,
she instead ran downstairs to protect the idea herself. Had
she been oriented to a two‐ person
psychological system, she would have used Bobby as her
pen and paper by sharing her thoughts with him
thereby recording them within his brain.
Cindy is alone all the time whether or not physically
present with someone. This default position
is ego‐ syntonic without awareness of its downside. She is
not oriented toward to utilizing her partner as a
brain into which her own brain can expand.
When Cindy realized what she had done she was shocked
by her own behavior. She didn't
understand why she would do such a thing even though it
was quite natural to her. Though physically
with Bobby while getting ready for bed, she was in a
dissociative state, autoregulating and unaware that
she was with another person at that moment. Bobby on
the other hand was completely aware that he
was with Cindy and so, for him, her walking away caused a
momentary breach in the attachment system.
The severity of the breach was moderated by her surprise
at her own behavior.2
Source: Couples Therapy
ADDICTION TO "ALONE TIME" ‐ ‐ AVOIDANT
ATTACHMENT, NARCISSISM, AND A ONE‐ PERSON
PSYCHOLOGY WITHIN A TWO‐ PERSON
PSYCHOLOGICAL SYSTEM
Stan Tatkin, Psy.D.
www.ahealthymind.org/csg/Articles/Addiction%20to%20Alon
e%20Time.pdf
downloaded: April 30, 2008
Disconnection:
Come back to Horney’s basic anxiety – loneliness and security
Security – made physically safe, and safety to explore the room
Think about safety to explore… self and world because no ideal self stuff, but
also
What do we do when we see we are not understood? When we don’t know how to share?
Chronic disconnection can cause one to hide their real self to get the connection.
Having one not know you or violate…
Not being in to the same level – different investments,
Change in investment
Anger is not the same as disconnection
THERAPY
1. First part, Dealing with power
Nurhan’s example – this is what therapists have done
They are part of the culture, they unconsciously reinforce it
Funny paradox of psychoanalytic – social power: both about the unconscious
Pathologizing
Everything is internal, archaic (mom/dad, original trauma scene)
Moynihan report
Power of the therapist relationship - acknowledge that the therapist has a lot of power
e.g. sleeping with clients – they are not equally consenting
What to do
Acknowledge (can be overzealous, often in response to huge problems)
Allow as a question
Equalize where can – e.g. exact same chairs.
Other examples:
(bell hooks, NPR) Men used to say
“women need to be secretaries because our big fat pudgy fingers can’t possibly fit”
“you’re better at it” – would be good to get nice quotes from that time.
Now they’re the ones using palm pilots, etc.
2. Connection stuff
Harder
Is it more of a personality theory, less of an organized therapy?
Examples from yesterday – you’re not right / wrong
Our stuff, not our stuff, we need new stuff, modify
How we sooth
How we get angry
OLD STUFF, some examples
About that relationship
Whole, contentment
Unheard, unseen
Understood
Take care of and am taken care of
Needed, overwhelmed
Take new chances together
Hannah & her sister (really) – make friends, feel more outgoing
Confident in other relationships, work, school
Stronger, capable
About relating
Nina – more confident in relationships
cf. Julio – more doubt when not heard
distrust
Stephen & Julio - accomplishment
Doubt about relationships in general
Lack of trust – in opposite gender
Amazement at being able to love so much
It is so big it can be shared (love, relating)
Deal with frustration – learned about my self
How to end/transition – experience discomfort without it being a failure
Example: Narcissist
A person creates inflated self image
To protect themselves from others and their fear of their own
From Personal examples:
Hyun pers reflection