"Dana Becker writes that for the past few decades women have been
encouraged to believe that by taking care of their psychological
selves they are becoming ever more powerful. Not so. In this
intelligent and chilling examination, Becker traces how the
repackaging of the psychological as power has led to the ultimate
colonization of women's psyches. She is a beautiful writer, an
exacting historian of ideas, and a tremendously intelligent guide
through these troubled waters."
--Sharon Lamb, Professor of Psychology, Saint Michael's College and
author of "The Secret Lives of Girls" and "The Trouble with Blame,"
"I was impressed with how the author marshaled this critical
literature into a coherent and...compelling narrative."
--"Social Service Review"
""The Myth of Empowerment" artfully documents 150 years of
American efforts at self-improvement. Re-reading such sociological
classics as Bellah, Lasch, Reiff, and Reissman, Becker expands (and
sometimes explodes) their arguments by inserting women into their
accounts of social life. Moving next to a savvy account of popular
women-centered therapies arising out of the late 20th century
feminism, Becker shows how they unwittingly incorporate some of the
very premises that they repudiate. The Myth of
Empowerment--delightfully informed by a witty sensibility, written
with brio and clarity, and cast in elegant prose--is compelling
reading. "
--Jeanne Maracek
The Myth of Empowerment surveys the ways in which women have
been represented and influenced by the rapidly growing therapeutic
culture--both popular and professional--from the mid-nineteenth
century to the present. The middle-class woman concerned about her
health and herability to care for others in an uncertain world is
not as different from her late nineteenth-century white
middle-class predecessors as we might imagine. In the nineteenth
century she was told that her moral virtue was her power; today,
her power is said to reside in her ability to "relate" to others or
to take better care of herself so that she can take care of others.
Dana Becker argues that ideas like empowerment perpetuate the myth
that many of the problems women have are medical rather than
societal; personal rather than political.
From mesmerism to psychotherapy to the "Oprah Winfrey Show,"
women have gleaned ideas about who they are as psychological
beings. Becker questions what women have had to gain from these
ideas as she recounts the story of where they have been led and
where the therapeutic culture is taking them.
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