0.6 Psychology of women  (Page 6/14)

Human Relations and a Modern Perspective on the Psychology of Women

Despite the valuable contributions of women included among the neo-Freudians, and Horney’s suggestion of womb envy as a powerful counterpart to penis envy, theories on the psychology of women remained framed within a psychodynamic perspective. Until, that is, the 1970s, when Jean Baker Miller and a group of women colleagues created a revolution in our potential understanding of the psychology of women.

Jean Baker Miller and the Stone Center Group

In 1974, Wellesley College in Massachusetts established the Center for Research on Women, and in 1981, the Stone Center for Developmental Services and Studies was established. Working in collaboration as the Wellesley Centers for Women (WCW), the Center for Research on Women conducts a variety of interdisciplinary studies on matters related to gender equity, while the Stone Center focuses on psychological well-being and a comprehensive understanding of human development, particularly the psychological development of women. A wide range of information on the WCW can be found on their website (http://www.wcwonline.org).

Jean Baker Miller (1927-present) was a practicing psychoanalyst who had already written one book on the psychoanalysis of women when she published Toward a New Psychology of Women (Miller, 1976). This book has been credited with nothing less than changing the very way in which we study the psychology of women. Since the earliest work of Sigmund Freud, women were seen as inferior, and so-called feminine attributes (e.g., vulnerability, weakness, emotionality, helping others; see Miller, 1976) were seen as psychologically weak. Miller and her colleagues at the Stone Center have worked hard to change that perspective. Typically working in collaboration, publishing collections of writing in books such as Women’s Growth in Connection (Jordan, Kaplan, Miller, Stiver,&Surrey, 1991), Women’s Growth in Diversity (Jordan, 1997b), and The Complexity of Connection (Jordan, Walker,&Hartling, 2004), they developed a relational model of human development that focuses on connections, disconnections, mutuality, and empathy . Examples of how relationships can be damaged when one person seeks connection but the other person seeks to disconnect are all around us. Miller presented an example from a patient she identified as Doris. Doris was trying to share with her husband how upset she was after a day of finding it very difficult to deal with her colleagues at work:

He listened for about ten minutes. That’s about his limit. Then he said, “Aw, don’t let the bastards upset you.” That’s just the sort of thing I suspect. It sounds fine and even supportive. But it really means, “Shut up. I’ve heard enough.” (pg. 100; Miller, 1976)

More recently, as members of the Stone Center became increasingly aware of the role of culture in development, the relational model evolved into the relational-cultural theory (RCT) of human development (Jordan&Walker, 2004). The inclusion of culture in the theory should not be underestimated or taken for granted. Psychological theories are not immune from the bias inherent in societies that seek to maintain their hierarchical power structures. Western societies are highly individualistic, and when individuality is favored in our theories the result can be unfortunate: