Description
This book presents an innovative relational perspective on women's ways of being in the world. It offers an alternative to traditional models of human development that define health and maturity in terms of separation and consistently define women as deficient. Written by leading clinicians and teachers from the Stone Center at Wellesley College, the book foregrounds women's meaning systems, values, and organization of experiences, which often revolve around relationships rather than the self. The authors set out basic relational principles and consider the implications for life challenges that many women face, as well as for psychotherapy.
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Overly emotional, hysterical, dependent, frivolous, fickle... Why have women been so consistently defined as deficient in maturity, self-mastery, and independence according to the models of human development inspired by male culture? The authors of WOMEN'S GROWTH IN CONNECTION, a sampling of the influential working papers from the Stone Center, Wellesley College, have sought to answer this question by studying developmental theory and reformulating it to reflect women's experience more accurately. These papers, about women's ways of being in the world, frame an innovative relational perspective on women's psychological development. The authors--clinicians, clinical supervisors, and teachers--have been searching for therapeutic models that take into account women's meaning systems, values, and organization of experiences, all of which often revolves around relationships rather than the self. By offering a new perspective on women's development, WOMEN'S GROWTH IN CONNECTION stands at the forefront of the ongoing feminist movement to examine and reshape psychological theory and practice. The authors offer this volume as an invitation to the reader to join in the building of new models of women's development.
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