Bonnie Burstow

With an emphasis on violence against women and on women's responses to it - such as depression, splitting and eating disturbances - this volume furthers the radicalization of feminist therapy. It serves as a comprehensive introduction for trainees and as an ongoing resource for social service workers and therapists. Providing detailed and grounded guidance, the author examines feminist approaches to working with women and discusses issues often omitted or pathologized in general feminist counselling texts, including prostitutes battered by pimps and self-mutilation. She explores such central questions as how women can empower themselves in a sexist society; what forms internalized oppression takes and how clients can be hel

Working in the Context of Violence

Radical Feminist Therapy

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Many women have told their male partners clearly and repeatedly what they want. Again and again, they have tried to help the man understand their concerns. Although some men do not listen at all, often the man listens. He seems to be catching on. Then, presto! The understanding vanishes without a trace. He makes almost the identical mistake again and is as bewildered as he was a thousand explanations ago. That is why she is sniping, being sarcastic, and interrupting. In such instances there is no point repeating the spousal ritual or even changing it by adding new words like feedback. 

 The man often sees nothing dreadfully wrong with the relationship, and this is not surprising because the arrangements favor him. Whether he is happy with the relationship or not, he does not like the idea of talking to strangers or indeed talking personally at all. He certainly does not like the idea of bringing the problems to a woman and is worried that the two females are going to gang up on him. He may come, accordingly, very reluc- tantly. and only after months of refusing. The counselor knows, just as the clients know, that she has the woman on her side and that the man is in danger of bolting. The man in turn knows that he has this ‘‘out,’’ and whether overtly or covertly, he makes sure that everyone else is aware of it. This threat gives the man incredible power. To make sure he does not bolt, counselors generally give more attention and empathy to the man, counting on the fact that the woman is going to “hang in.” The counselor therefore addresses the man’s concerns first and treats the couple’s respective grievances as if they were equally valid. She sacrifices the woman because she can count on the woman to be an ally, while telling herself that by doing this, she is serving the woman’s interest “in the long run.” Generally the pull lessens over time and counseling becomes less oppres- sive, but “the long run” never fully arrives. Session after session, the pull is to temporarily sacrifice the woman for strategic reasons. 

Not being oppressed or not as oppressed, he may be quite easygoing. He smiles. He puts everything so reasonably. In some cases he may even have been cleaning up the house for the last few months. The overburdened and invalidated wife, meanwhile, who may additionally have been leaving the house a mess for months now, seems irrational, screams, accuses, nags. We may find her hard to be with and can easily understand why he would. In situations such as this, many feminist counselors forget everything they know about sexism and begin colluding with the man and pathologizing the woman.

Sexism combines with ableism to compound the problem. Under the patriar- chy, women’s value is nullified when disabled. The fundamental reduction that all women suffer is the reduction to bodies tailored for and relegated to the sexual and domestic servicing of males. 

An example of this occurred in Winnipeg a few years ago. A Native woman was repeatedly beaten by her male partner. One day Re started to beat her elderly mother. She called the police. The Native community responded by ostracizing her. This particular community was largely composed of Native males and Native-male-identified women. From the vantage point of both, the woman was guilty of turning in one of her own kind to the white oppressor, and what she had done was unforgivable. Similarly. many Native women have been beaten on the reserves by their male partners and have complained to the chief and other Native authorities, received no help, and found themselves double-bound by the demands of loyalty. Such instances as these are complicated and require extreme sensitivity. Women are being caught in no-woman’s land between two very real oppres- sions. They are asked to be totally loyal to one oppression, while being hammered by the other. As counselors we need to understand the dilemma, to empathize with the agony, to help women do what they must to protect themselves, and to support them. By helping them unearth the very formidable contradictions and the double binds in which they are placed and by affirming their rights, we can help them get rid of guilt, see farther, and act. It is also important to do what we can to help them link up with other Native women who are similarly discontent. For ultimately it is from Native women thinking and acting together that more empowering and enduring solutions will emerge. 

Accommodation was not dictated by the oppressor. It comes from a deep respect for all beings and from a fundamental sense of connectedness. Accommodation is wonderful, and it is unproblematic in a cooperative world. Whites, however, have used it to further oppression. 

A second type of just-like-us script I call “honorary just-like-us scripts.” The woman with this script has been assigned and has accepted attributes that are traditionally identified with the oppressor. She has been treated like an “excep- tion” by one or more significant others who belong to the oppressor group. And she has been rewarded for joining with them in belittling the oppressed group to which she actually belongs. 

He does not know a woman’s pain, he does not understand her confusion, resistance, and suffering except as the “correctable” pathological symptomology that it becomes under his androcentric medical gaze. Individual psychia- trists, of course, may sometimes see more, despite their conditioning as medical males. Psychiatrists as a group, however, seewhat their lens alIows them to see. That lens has been specially fashioned out of their own professionalism-that is, out of their own gender, position, and mandate-to pathologize women’s resistancdthought and to filter out women’s reality. 

Nurses and social work- ers, who correspondingly are predominantly women, play the role of mother under the patriarchy. They handle almost all of the emotional and physical caretaking; they mete out the discipline; they preside over bodily injury (toxic drugging, etc.); they force “patients” to comply with the order of the male authority; and they attend to all facets of the “patients”’ existence. They are always around, giving orders and pushing “treatment” on the “patients.” By contrast the seemingly benign psychiatrist (absentee father) drops by for a few minutes a week, smiles kindly at the “patients,” and reassures them. Nurses and social workers receive most of the resentment accordingly, and the psychiatrist is obeyed, while being saved from disapproval, the work, and indeed the very reality of his patients’ existence. Put all this together, and a clear picture emerges. Psychiatrist as absent but powerful father resocializes woman as sick infant. with Woman as Laboring Body functioning as servant and scapegoat- all this for the greater good of the patriarchy. 

Research by Templer, Ruff,and Armstrong (1973) correspondingly indicated that ECT causes permanent memory loss and general intellectual impairment. As with so many other treatments, insofar as depression is alleviated (and the long-term results here are very dismal indeed), alleviation is extremely tempo- rary and, as Breggin (1979) showed, it stems From brain damage.” For a while people whose memory has been impaired simply are not depressed over what they cannot remember. 

This last group is a remnant-a core-af female power in the midst of patriarchy. The witches and midwives were women-identified women, often lesbian. They were the inheritors of early religions, of earlier ways of being. For century after century they defied the patriarchy, bringing women’s knowledge, spirituality, and ways of healing to those in need. They represented a very real threat to the patriarchy generally. They were a special threat to male doctors, whose male ways of curing were not nearly so popular, and to the patriarchal Church. The doctors initially responded by condemning these healers and by arguing successfully that they be outlawed. The Church responded by massacring them. On December 9, 1484,Pope Innocent VIII issued a Bull, naming Sprenger and Kramer chief inquisitors and giving the Inquisition extensive powers to confine, try, torture, and bum people accused of witchcraft? The Bull ushered in more than a century of torture and killing-all of it in the name of help. Inquisitor after inquisitor brutally extracted confessions from our foremothers. Once the women confessed, the Church consigned them to the flames, allegedly to save their immortal souls. Without a doubt the Inquisition was a massive gynocidal enterprise based on the hatred and fear of women. The vast majority of people tried were women. The “hideous crimes” attributed to those insecurity.

As women age, the harsh realities of ageism and sexism combine. In some cultures, like the Native, older women are valued and respected. Not so in the dominant and most nondominant North American cultures. Not attractive by male standards, no longer “of service” sexually or domestically, we are not valued. Our wisdom is not recognized. Many an older woman is deserted by a male partner who prefers younger women. Older woman as despised or incon- venient mother or mother-in-law may be barely tolerated in her children’s home. Having earned very little money throughout their lives and having very little pension, the majority of older women are poor. Many face the violence and infantilization of the nursing home. Unhappy, alone, and no longer able to put up the pretenses expected, many end up subjected to antidepressants and electroshock. 

Often father and daughter look down on mother (woman) together. They exchange meaningful glances when she misses a point. They agree that she is not bright as they are, cannot reason as they do. This collusion does not save the daughter from the mother’s fate.

On the emotional side she is the nurturer. She is always there, outside of herself, thinking about what others need. She calms, she reassures, she supports, she makes certain that everyone else is all right. The personal intimacy and the giving are undeniably wonderful. Women are the richer and more fully human for being able to be intimate and to give, and men are the poorer for not developing this side of themselves. Insofar as this intimacy and personal giving are compulsory, one-sided, and all-encompassing. however, they are fundamentally dehumanizing and are a tyranny. They mean having no Self. They mean having all the responsibilities and none of the rights. They mean being taken for granted and being blamed by professionals, family, community, and state alike when anything goes wrong. They mean not mattering, not being important. They mean having the little child that is inside all of us forever sacrificed. 

Although this power is uniquely human or allegedly so, we are not fully human if we exercise it primarily in isolation. Insofar as we act as discrete individuals, we are negating the aspect that makes us more than isolated for-itselfs and that confers humanity on us-that is, our being-as-being-with. We are most authentically human when we appreciate our connectedness with everyone else, when we embrace the other as subject, when we engage together in world-creating dialogue. We are most authentic, correspondingly, when we realize our connectedness with all that exists and allow this ecological under- standing to help form our dialogue and to guide our projects.

The so-called “mental health system” served the interest of the patriarchy; that is, it pathologized the socially created problems that women face and reinforced the sex roles that the patriarchy prescribes. […] Whether conducted by men or by women, therapy was a patriarchal institution whose vision and goals contributed to the infantilization and disempowering of women.

Radical Feminist Therapy Working in the Context of Violence

Highlights