This capacity for personal reflectivity is basic to learning to reflect on the cultural assumptions that govern the rules, conventions and social expectations that in turn govern the way we think, perceive, act, and feel. It is the process by which we develop an internal authority and standard by which to measure that which is external. To be critically conscious or aware is to be able to:

1. question concepts and their adequacy as a basis for making judgements and under- standing issues;
   
   
2. be aware of the interests and anticipations (and biases?) that influence the way we think, perceive or act;
   
   
3. c) become aware of cultural and psychological assumptions which give very limited explanations of personal experience.

A good example of critical reflectivity directly related to women's issues comes from Hogie Wyckoff. She describes a "stroke economy" that is based on an artificial cultural assumption (of which most people are not conscious) that there is "a scarcity of love".

Don't ask for strokes you want
Don't give strokes you have
Don't accept strokes offered to you
Don't refuse strokes you don't want
Don't stroke yourself. (1977)

These rules are learned very early in our lives and most frequently at our mother's knee - not because mothers are evil, but because mothers are women and the culture says that women don't need to be nurtured.

III. POLITICAL EMPHASIS.

Heightened consciousness of societal responsibility for women's anguish has led to a determined effort to change women's lot by changing the cultural values and morals that serve to keep women in a subservient and oppressed position. Goals for feminist therapy include greater comfort and freedom for the individual woman, accompanied by the belief that achievement of change and comfort for her ultimately works toward greater comfort and change in the system for all women. The urgency of women's position as an oppressed group however calls for a solution that is more rapid than that of individuals here and there becoming more autonomous and self-actualizing. To change the system requires not only raised consciousness, but increased solidarity and encouragement among women. Hogie Wyckoff, in her book, Solving Women's Problems, presents formulae that describe the issue very succinctly:

Oppression + Lies + Isolation = Alienation

The antithesis

Action + Awareness + Contact = Liberation.

The need for solidarity among women is basic to the promotion by feminist therapists of group work as a major mode of therapy, and the context for regaining personal power and emotional health. Wyckoff outlines the advantages of groups which use the cooperative problem solving model. The group provides a new community which is supportive and safe, and an economical way to get help. It provides validation of intellectual and intuitive understanding. Cooperation is seen as an antidote to the cultural pressures to compete. There is validation of emotions and encouragement to express them. Competency is constantly reinforced, and there is the recognition of women's needs to be nurtured as well as provision of that nurturing.