Radical Visionaries: Feminist Therapy Pioneers, 1970-1975

Claudia Pitts, Debra M. Kawahara, Claudia Pitts, Debra M. Kawahara

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781138295650
• eBook ISBN: 9781351586566
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Mental Health in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Radical Visionaries documents and honours those feminist therapy pioneers of the 1970s who moved the mental health establishment, and possibly the world, through radical action, to begin to consider women as fully human. It is remarkable today, even in these difficult times, to realize how far we have come, and to know it was these women who galvanized this move forward toward self-exploration and equality. As we move into the current era of feminism and social justice, it is imperative to pause to consider how these 'second wave' feminist pioneers gave us feminist therapy and all that followed from it. From the earliest stages of the movement, feminists used consciousness raising, which moved into the notion of the egalitarian therapy and ultimately led toward a cultural shift towards female empowerment and the groundswell of women into clinical psychology programs. These founding feminist therapists impacted structures including the criminal justice system, divorce proceedings, domestic violence services, education, medicine, and banking. This book highlight these women's stories, told by the pioneers themselves, as they forged the trail for those of us who follow them. This book was originally published as a special issue of Women & Therapy.

Jean Baker Miller, MD, Visionary Pragmatist

Judith V. Jordan

ABSTRACT
Jean Baker Miller’s 1976 book, Toward a New Psychology of Women, was an overnight success. It struck a deep chord in many women because it was based on listening to women’s stories. Instead of seeing women through the lens of male psychology with its emphasis on separation and autonomy, Jean suggested that relationships are central to women’s experience of themselves and the world. Traits that were typically pathologized (needing other people, attending to the messages of emotions, wanting to participate in growth fostering relationships for all involved) were revisited by Jean and her colleagues who discovered strengths where others had seen weakness. The resulting work is known as Relational-Cultural Theory (RCT) and has offered new understandings of women’s and men’s development with a special emphasis on the impact of power and marginalization on personal and collective wellbeing. Jean’s work is carried forward by members of a collaborative group with whom Jean worked for many years. RCT theorists have written and edited over 20 books, 115 works in progress, and numerous chapters and articles that continue to elaborate on Jean’s groundbreaking work. RCT is applied to both clinical and social justice settings. Jean was devoted to contributing to the creation of a more just society.

Jean Baker Miller’s life story is one of courage and connection. With the help of caring relationships and people who saw something special in her, Jean faced many challenges. She not only met those challenges, but grew through them. From an early age, she lived the values and beliefs that she would come to write about and for which she would be celebrated. She knew no one “made it alone.” She knew that growth-fostering relationships were necessary for human survival and wellbeing. And, she came to see that the many theories of “human development” misrepresented and distorted women’s experience, presenting images of girls and women that emphasized their immaturity, neediness, weakness, and failure. The work of Jean’s lifetime was devoted to finding strength and creativity where others saw weakness and incompetence. She named women as the carriers of relationship and caring in the culture, and she went about listening to women’s voices and accurately describing their life experiences. She did not seek to make women into “better men”; she sought to accurately represent women’s experiences and to show how vital women’s skills and concerns are to the wellbeing of all people. Responses from readers to her best-selling book Toward a New Psychology of Women (Miller, 1976) were gratefully offered again and again: “Your book changed my life. Thank you.” Jean once noted that the shift from a psychology of separation to a psychology of relationship “changes everything.” And so it does. I offer this brief and very incomplete look at Jean Baker Miller’s life with enormous gratitude and hope, in honor of a brilliant mentor and dear friend who has changed many lives and provided us all with a sense of renewed possibility.

Early Years

Jean Baker Miller was born on Sept 29, 1927, to a working class, immigrant family in the Bronx, New York. Her mother was of Irish descent, and her father of German heritage. She was the third of three children with an older brother, Henry, and an older sister, Irene. Times were tough; joblessness was rampant during the Great Depression. Jean’s father, Henry, managed to keep his job as a clerk for the city, but faced never-ending cutbacks, while her mother, Irene, was a traditional housewife. When she was only 11 months old, Jean was diagnosed with polio. Although the family had a tendency to minimize this illness, Jean noted she spent much time in hospitals, was subject to repeated and painful surgeries, and had ongoing treatments in dreary clinics where she eventually immersed herself in books. Characteristically, Jean did not lament this affliction, but instead she reported having been inspired to pursue a career in medicine while in the care of two devoted nurses, twin sisters named Stone. These nurses took an interest in this shy, bright, and appealing child. Confined to an orthopedic ward for two six month stints, Jean started a ward newspaper, and she reported that “I read and I read … like Nancy Drew Mysteries.” She did not remember her physical disability as being limiting.

Jean described her parents as emotionally reserved “WASP types.” Jean felt that underneath her quiet demeanor, her mother was “spunky.” Jean’s Aunt Hermine and cousin Irene were two women in the family who established some sense of making lives for themselves out in the world, and Jean remembered being impressed by them. Jean also recalled having very supportive and encouraging teachers in the New York public school system. The twin nurses persuaded Jean’s mother to let her attend Hunter College High School for gifted young girls. During the war, Jean and her friends worked on war relief activities: knitting, packing bandages and so on. Jean noted this was a “woman’s thing.”

Education

When an interested teacher asked Jean where she was planning to go to college, she responded she had to go to a public college because she had no money; the teacher urged her to look into scholarships. Jean did, and she also took in the message from this teacher: “You could really do something.” Her intellectual interests burgeoned. She applied to and got a scholarship to Sarah Lawrence College. At Sarah Lawrence, she was exposed to wealth and society in a way that made her feel “outside.” She saw elitism and privilege up close, and she initially felt lonely and “different.” But, she was also exposed to brilliant teachers, mostly women, and they inspired her.

Her first year advisor, Helen Merrill Lynd, was welcoming to Jean and introduced her to psychology. With her husband, Robert, Helen had written an influential sociology book: Middletown: A Study in Contemporary American Culture (Lynd & Lynd, 1929). Jean later described Helen as very “devoted” and kind to her. Jean took Lynd’s course in Social Philosophy, and in this rich and engaged intellectual atmosphere, Jean flourished. She steadfastly believed she was able to thrive because of the people who took an interest in her. She felt that Helen Lynd “took me into her family.” While visiting at Helen’s home, she met Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson. In the presence of these “intellectuals,” Jean felt shy, quiet, and sometimes “stupid.” Later, Jean dedicated Toward a New Psychology of Women (Miller, 1976) to Helen Merrill Lynd (Lynd, 1958).

Jean eventually found her peer niche with the intellectual, liberal set of girls she lived with at Sarah Lawrence. But, Jean was also beginning to gain a sense of direction and purpose. She loved science and had a strong sense of wanting to contribute to the wellbeing of others; she had also developed a desire to work for social justice which grew more intense over the ensuing years.

Around this time, Jean’s determination to go to medical school was getting clearer. For each advance she made in life, Jean credited the importance of women who fostered her development: the Stone sisters, Helen Lynd, and Aunt Hermine. She once described her history as made up of a “line of women”; “these people opened up worlds to me” (Cohn, 1997, p. 197).

Pursuing her goal to become a physician, Jean was again encouraged to apply for a scholarship. Of the 110 students in her class at Columbia Medical School, ten were women. Jean reported the climate in medical school was decidedly sexist. There was little of the camaraderie of high school and college. The atmosphere at Columbia was cold, competitive, and unfriendly. Jean found the curriculum uninspiring. It was a “horrible atmosphere” with no awareness of feminism or the special stressors of being a woman in medical school. In one bright spot that had quite an impact on her, Jean attended a symposium on female psychology and was inspired by Bernard Robbins who suggested that women had certain strengths that men lacked. His ideas were laughed at and scorned by the mainstream psychoanalytic community, but Jean was resonant with his message, and it remained with her.

Upon completing her MD in 1952, she pursued residency programs at Montefiore Medical Center, Bellevue Hospital Center, the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Upstate Medical Center, and New York Medical College while she completed her psychoanalytic training. Jean went into analysis with Walter Bonime who had trained at the Horney Institute. She saw him four times a week for six years. Jean felt he was “on her side,” but not especially empathic about women’s concerns.

While pursuing her professional interests, Jean was also meeting interesting and creative people engaged in academia and social activism. At a New Year’s Eve party on Dec 31, 1953, Jean met Mike Miller, a sociology professor who was passionately involved in addressing issues of poverty and inequality. Mike was involved with a project with David Riesman which sought to make social science data available for the use of progressive politicians. Jean and Mike were drawn to each other’s intellects, political awareness, and social justice activism (And, of course, Jean noted, “I loved him.”). Sixteen months after they met a second time (the first time they met, there was little mutual interest), they married.

Mike’s career was taking off as his area of interest, poverty and its related consequences, was becoming an important focus in the early Kennedy White House. Jean’s own political involvement continued when she joined the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom and the Council on Racial Equality. Mike and Jean together participated in marches and demonstrations. Jean also became involved nationally with an active student association of interns and medical students which promoted progressive health care policies. As a consequence of these activities, Jean was called into the dean’s office and told to disengage from this group or be subject to scrutiny of the House’s Un-American Activities Committee. Jean refused and lost her scholarship.

In 1956, nine months short of fulfilling her specialty training in psychiatry, Jean was asked to leave her residency training at Albert Einstein when the dean discovered she was pregnant. Her future in psychiatry was in jeopardy, and Jean felt “Now I am out of academic medicine.” Not allowed to continue her training at Albert Einstein, Jean set up a private practice, while she also worked hard at mothering an active young baby, her son Jon. Despite Mike’s engaged fathering (remarkable for the time), Jean felt stressed by the demands of profession and mothering, and several moves for Mike’s career complicated Jean’s career development.

Between the ages of 27 and 33, Jean had married, had two sons, and committed to the study and subsequent practice of psychiatry. When Mike was wooed in 1973 by the Sociology department at Boston University, the family of four, now including younger son Ned, relocated to Boston. Jean was appointed as a Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Boston University School of Medicine and was on the faculty at Harvard Medical School. She practiced psychiatry at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and was a member of the American College of Psychiatrists, the American Psychiatric Association, and the American Academy of Psychoanalysis.

Increasing Feminist Awareness

When she was in her forties, Jean’s interest in feminism was sparked by Friedan’s (1963) The Feminine Mystique. Consciousness-raising groups increased her engagement with feminist ideas. A supervisee urged Jean to join a consciousness-raising group. At first, Jean refused: “Those are for young people.” But, colleagues continued to press Jean to join a group, and she did so in 1968, 1 year after the first women’s consciousness-raising groups met in New York. Her group was composed of two secretaries, two teachers, a nurse, and a doctor, Jean. In this group, Jean heard many of the same stories and dilemmas that she had heard from her patients; they struggled with a sense of being “supposedly maladapted females.” There was a decidedly political cast to these discussions which were occurring in turbulent political times. There was also empowering validation. Women were listening to one another, resonating with each other’s stories and reaching out to support one another. Jean saw women being helped by one another, and she was impressed and moved by the power of these groups. After joining such a group, Jean remembers thinking “these groups are doing more [for women] than I am for my patients” (Miller & Welch, 1995, p. 337). What she was hearing and learning from these women was beginning to feel relevant to her practice of therapy. People spoke honestly, and their stories were moving and were not being represented in mainstream developmental and clinical theories.

Later, in Boston, she met with a group of women analysts who were interested in women’s issues. But, she was still searching for ways to represent women’s voices. Her first publication in 1971, “On women: New political directions for women,” was published in the Journal of Social Policy (Miller, 1971). In it, she addressed the idea of “unnecessary people who were on the periphery of economic and political power” (Cohn, 1997, p. 248). In her 1973 book Psychoanalysis and Women, Jean brought the historical contributions of women like Karen Horney and Clara Thompson to the fore as she sought to make visible the often invisible contributions of women to families, workplaces, and the broader society (Miller, 1973). She revealed how necessary “unnecessary” people are.

Toward a New Psychology of Women

It was a friend of a teacher of her son Jon, Ann Bernays, who pushed Jean to take her thoughts about women and the psychology of women seriously. In February, 1975, Ann, a successful writer, who also was the granddaughter of Sigmund Freud, had been approached by Beacon Press to write a book on women. A novelist and busy with other work at the time, Ann interviewed Jean for the book and came to the conclusion that Jean, not she, was the person to write this book. She urged Jean, “You’re the one who should write this book, not me.” Jean protested, “I can’t do it. I don’t want to write a book. I can’t do it.” Mary Ann Lash, an editor at Beacon Press, provided encouragement. She suggested Jean take some already written papers and think about pulling them together into a book. Mary Ann said simply, “Try until the end of August and see what you can get done.” At the end of the summer, Jean had written a book! Toward a New Psychology of Women (Miller, 1976) was launched.

The core ideas of the book were: cultural context and power dynamics exert a deep influence on women’s lives; relationships are the central organizing feature of women’s development; and forces of dominance and subordination shape the lives of those at the margin and those in positions of power in ways that undermine the full development of our human potential. Jean’s model showed a deep appreciation of women’s relational qualities and activities as strengths, not signs of weakness.

Though Jean’s 1976 book was Toward a New Psychology of Women, her thinking was always fully infused with an appreciation of social and political forces in people’s lives, and she soon came to see that traditional developmental theories did not accurately represent men’s or women’s life experiences. She explored power relationships at a time when most therapists still ignored issues of dominance or subordination and the impact of “power over” dynamics. Early on, Jean saw the power of connection in people’s lives, but also saw the destructive consequences of systems marked by “power over” others. Jean was dedicated to not just a better understanding of women’s lives, but she sought to bring about a deeper appreciation of the forces of marginalization for all people. She sought to expose the distorting effects of domination and subordination on individuals and on society.

Jean took what were presented in traditional theories as women’s weaknesses and found the strength and life giving forces instead. She listened as her patients and colleagues spoke of the importance of their relationships (all relationships, not just romantic or maternal), of how they came alive in relationships, and grew and discovered their creativity and strength in relationships. She pointed to the ways in which these strengths are trivialized or disparaged. She noted that when we misunderstand and distort people’s psychological development, we participate in their disempowerment. We pathologize that which deviates from the norm of the dominant, norm-setting gr...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Half Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Citation Information
• Notes on Contributors
• Preface: A Farewell Letter from the Editor
• Introduction: Radical Visionaries – Feminist Psychotherapists: 1970–1975
• 1. Jean Baker Miller, MD, Visionary Pragmatist
• 2. Feminist Pioneer: Annette Brodsky Paving the Way
• 3. Phyllis Chesler – A Life on Behalf of Women
• 4. Feminist Therapy Pioneer: E. Kitch Childs
• 5. “You Just Know It’s the Only Thing You Can Think”: A Conversation with Chodorow
• 6. The Amazing Life and Times of Oliva Espín
• 7. Feminism, Therapy, and Changing the World
• 8. Those Were the Best of Times, and Then…
• 9. The Proud and Productive Life of a Red-Diaper Baby: Judith Herman
• 10. Dis-Illusioning Psychology: Epistemology and the Contextual Psychology of Ellyn Kaschak
• 11. Hannah Lerman: My Feminist Journey
• 12. Harriet Lerner: A Feminist Voice From the Wheat Fields
• 13. Blowing in the Wind: ‘70s Questions for Millennial Therapists
• 14. Sara Sharratt: Global Feminist Pioneer
• 15. Feminist Psychology and Psychotherapy: A Personal Journey
• 16. Feminist Pioneer: Lenore E. A. Walker
• Index