Abstract

PART 1: FOUNDATIONS Feminist Therapy’s Roots and Wings Marcia Hill This is a critical time for feminism in general and for feminist therapy in particular. We have made many gains: feminist principles have been incorporated to some extent into ethics codes and into norms of gener- ally accepted practice. Nonetheless, there has been a lengthy and in- creasingly powerful political swing to the right, especially in the U.S. This has not left the practice of psychotherapy unaffected. So although professional organizations now recommend sensitivity to a client’s race, gender and sexual orientation, therapist autonomy is increasingly restricted to techniques and time lines that serve the insurance industry rather than clients. While awareness of violence against women is now commonplace among clinicians, human pain has become increasingly defined in medical, rather than psychological or sociopolitical, terms. Even the language of therapy has been co-opted by the insurance indus- try: Therapists are now “providers,” clients are “consumers,” and psy- chotherapy is “behavioral care” (as if all problems were behavioral). Words like “emotions” have been all but eliminated from the lexicon of [Haworth co-indexing entry note]: “Feminist Therapy’s Roots and Wings.” Hill, Marcia. Co-published simultaneously in Women & Therapy (The Haworth Press,