b. Female Developmental Theory:

Sturdivant claims that the adoption of a "growth/developmental" model of therapy as opposed to an "illness/remediation" model is the result of the feminist perspective that pathology is resident in the culture. The primary goal of therapy becomes: change that is social as well as personal. Luise Eichenbaum and Susie Orbach in their book Understanding Women: A feminist psychoanalytic approach rely on object-relations theory to support their theory of female development. These two feminist therapists who recognized the importance of Freud's discovery of the unconscious, were trying to understand "the vicissitudes of psychic life that was a powerful determinant in the politics of everyday experience" and they wanted to understand girls' psychological development (p.13). They were drawn to object relations theory because clinical descriptions in the literature fitted with what they were seeing in their own clinical practices, and because object relations theory of the construction of personality was "based firmly within a relational context". They have outlined a theory of female development that accounts for one of the major difficulties women face, namely, need for nurturance in conflict with the culture's demands that women nurture others and deny their own needs for nurturance.

I see the work of Eichenbaum and Orbach as highly political. Women's own inner conflicts in regard to nurturance and other issues often arise out of sexually-biased cultural assumptions. By helping the client to discover her own inner conflicts, Eichenbaum and Orbach reinforce the client's own personal authority, and thus facilitate change in her "self" concept at a deep structural level.

The whole issue of authority is a very important one for women. It is almost "natural" by this time in our social evolution for women to look for answers outside themselves.

There is a danger that the feminist movement will become one more "authority figure" for women to follow and emulate. If this happens, we will only create a different kind of "false self" for women rather than helping ourselves to become truly centered in our own inner authority and self. Our anger will be reactionary and lacking in the power necessary to change structures in our society. The power of the unconscious (or non-conscious) and its direct connection with culture is not to be minimized. Consciousness raising is a process that must go deep into our very personality structure. Women who have been deprived of finding their own "selves" by mothers and fathers who needed their children to compensate for their own emotional deprivation may need more than problem-solving or consciousness-raising groups. These women have not only deeply internalized the patriarchal values of our culture; they have made them the very meaning of their lives. Consciousness-raising groups may prove too threatening to a self-structure that is very fragile. The patriarchal system can produce more than a faulty belief system. It is capable of producing developmental deficits! Economically one is not wrong if one is poor. But being poor is painful and constricting. Emotionally, it is not an illness to have a developmental deficit, but it is painful and an obstacle to personal empowerment. It is in situations such as this that individual psychotherapy becomes a potent means of facilitating the development of selfhood and personal authority which women need in order to be able to critically observe the social structures in which we live.

Carol Gilligan (1982) addresses the issues of moral development in women. Jane Loevinger provides an understanding of adult ego development that is explicitly female, and Robert Kegan (1982) has developed a theory of ego development that gives equal weight to the dimensions of attachment and separation in the development of both males and females.

c. Adult Learning Theory:

Developing the capacity for critical awareness is one of the most important benefits of psychotherapy. Becoming critically aware of how and why the structure of psycho-cultural assumptions has come to inform the way we perceive ourselves and our relationships requires a more complex form of education than cognitive insight. Jack Mezirow (1978) describes this process of "critical reflectivity" as the most significant characteristic of adult learning and notes that it has four components:

1. The capacity to reflect on, or simply become aware of a specific perception, meaning or behavior of our own, or habits we have of perceiving, thinking or acting. It is that moment of standing back from oneself and observing, "Oh! I think I like that!"
   
   
2. The capacity to reflect on how we feel about the way we are perceiving, thinking and acting.
   
   
3. The capacity to discriminate or assess the efficacy of our perceptions, thoughts, actions and habits to identify immediate causes , recognize reality contexts in which we are functioning, and identify our relationships in the situation.
   
   
4. The capacity for intentionally making value judgements or becoming aware of the value judgements we make unconsciously, about our perceptions, thoughts, actions. That is, "do I like or dislike the way I think? Do I see my actions as positive or negative?"