Women's experience of feminist therapy and counselling

the long version

Feminist therapy and counselling is developing worldwide, but accounts from women participants of its effects on their emotional wellbeing are scarce. Eileen McLeod's original analysis presents women participants' own experience and views. These constitute a poignant and telling critique of the impact of social inequalities on personal relationships and of the theory and practice of feminist therapy and counselling. The main features of this critique are: Taking account of women's differential experience of ageism, heterosexism, racism, disablism and poverty, is essential to understanding the state of their emotional wellbeing. Women should not be characterized as psychological victims, but recognized as retaining a capacity for self-expressive, assertive and also dominating behaviour. Feminist therapy and counselling can promote women's emotional wellbeing, but only to the extent that it offers an experience of relative freedom from subordination. Initiatives beyond therapy and counselling - tackling a range of social inequalities - are also essential to realizing women's emotional wellbeing. Counsellors' views and experience are also analysed to clarify the nature of their theories and methods, the impact of practice on them as workers and the significance of attempts to create non-hierarchical forms of organization.