Post by monica on Dec 27, 2015 20:29:36 GMT
How did the anti-psychiatry movement influence the first feminist therapists?
The feminist psychologists were critical of historical research as having been done from primarily a male perspective, assuming that the male was the 'norm'. Many psychoanalytic concepts were considered by feminist therapists to be sexist and culturally-bound The anti-psychiatry movement argued that the treatment offered in psychoanalysis, and the asylums, only contributed to psychiatric illnesses rather than curing them, and considers psychiatry a coercive instrument of oppression due to an unequal power relationship between doctor and patient. it also involved a highly subjective diagnostic process. Feminist therapists understood this position from their own perspective, in an age where women could be seen to be mentally ill if they didn't follow the expected norms of society, so to that extent they were in agreement with a lot of what the anti-psychiatry movement thought.
That said, the anti-psychiatry still had a strong male-as-all-powerful-therapist approach, which encouraged the feminist therapy movement away and to focus on re-valuing feminine characteristics and perspectives.
The feminist psychologists were critical of historical research as having been done from primarily a male perspective, assuming that the male was the 'norm'. Many psychoanalytic concepts were considered by feminist therapists to be sexist and culturally-bound The anti-psychiatry movement argued that the treatment offered in psychoanalysis, and the asylums, only contributed to psychiatric illnesses rather than curing them, and considers psychiatry a coercive instrument of oppression due to an unequal power relationship between doctor and patient. it also involved a highly subjective diagnostic process. Feminist therapists understood this position from their own perspective, in an age where women could be seen to be mentally ill if they didn't follow the expected norms of society, so to that extent they were in agreement with a lot of what the anti-psychiatry movement thought.
That said, the anti-psychiatry still had a strong male-as-all-powerful-therapist approach, which encouraged the feminist therapy movement away and to focus on re-valuing feminine characteristics and perspectives.