Managing the Monstrous Feminine takes a unique approach to the study of the material and discursive practices associated with the construction and regulation of the female body. Jane Ussher examines the ways in which medicine, science, the law and popular culture combine to produce fictions about femininity, positioning the reproductive body as the source of women's power, danger and weakness. Including sections on 'regulation', 'the subjectification of women' and 'women's negotiation and resistance', this book describes the construction of the 'monstrous feminine' in mythology, art, literature and film, revealing its implications for the regulation and experience of the fecund female body. Critical reviews are combined with case studies and extensive interview material to illuminate discussions of subjects including: the regulation of women through the body regimes of knowledge associated with reproduction intersubjectivity and the body women's narratives of resistance. These insights into the relation between the construction of the female body and women's subjectivity will be of interest to those studying health psychology, social psychology, medical sociology, gender studies and cultural studies. The book will also appeal to all those looking for a high-level introduction to contemporary feminist thought on the female body.

Winner of the 2009 Feminist & Women's Studies Association (UK & Ireland) Book Award

Many women find mothering a shocking experience in terms of the extremity of feelings it provokes, and the profound changes it seems to prompt in identity, relationship and sense of self. However, although motherhood can catapult us into a state of internal disarray, it can also provide us with a unique chance to make ourselves anew. How then do we understand this radical potential for transformation within maternal experience? In Maternal Encounters, Lisa Baraitser takes up this question through the analysis of a series of maternal anecdotes, charting key destabilizing moments in the life of just one mother, and using these to discuss many questions that have remained resistant to theoretical analysis the possibility for a specific feminine-maternal subjectivity, relationality and reciprocity, ethics and otherness.

Working across contemporary philosophies of feminist ethics, as well as psychoanalysis and social theory, the maternal subject, in Baraitser s account, becomes an emblematic and enigmatic formation of a subjectivity called into being through a relation to another she comes to name and claim as her child. As she navigates through the peculiarity of maternal experience, Baraitser takes us on a journey in which the mother emerges in the most unlikely, precarious and unstable of places as a subject of alterity, transformation, interruption, heightened sentience, viscosity, encumberment and love.

This book presents a major new theory of maternal subjectivity, and an innovative and accessible way into our understanding of contemporary motherhood. As such, it will be of interest to students of family studies, gender studies, psychoanalysis, critical psychology and feminist philosophy as well as counselling and psychotherapy.

The new edition of "Beauty and Misogyny "revisits and updates Sheila Jeffreys' uncompromising critique of Western beauty practice and the industries and ideologies behind it. Jeffreys argues that beauty practices are not related to individual female choice or creative expression, but represent instead an important aspect of women's oppression. As these practices have become increasingly brutal and pervasive, the need to scrutinize and dismantle them is if anything more urgent now as it was in 2005 when the first edition of the book was published.

The United Nations concept of "harmful traditional/cultural practices" provides a useful lens for the author to advance her critique. She makes the case for including Western beauty practices within this definition, examining their role in damaging women's health, creating sexual difference and enforcing female deference.

First-wave feminists of the 1970s criticized pervasive beauty regimes such as dieting and depilation, but a later argument took hold that beauty practices were no longer oppressive now that women could "choose" them. In recent years the reality of Western beauty practices has become much more bloody and severe, requiring the breaking of skin and the rearrangement or amputation of body parts. "Beauty and Misogyny" seeks to make sense of why beauty practices have not only persisted but become more extreme. It examines the pervasive use of makeup, the misogyny of fashion and high-heeled shoes, and looks at the role of pornography in the creation of increasingly popular beauty practices such as breast implants, genital waxing, surgical alteration of the labia and other forms of self-mutilation. The book concludes by considering how a culture of resistance to these practices can be created.

A new and thoroughly updated edition of this essential work will appeal to all levels of students and teachers of gender studies, cultural studies and feminist psychology, and to anyone with an interest in feminism, women and beauty, and women's health."

Nominated for the 2012 Distinguished Publication Award of the Association for Women in Psychology

Why are women more likely to be positioned or diagnosed as mad than men?

If madness is a social construction, a gendered label, as many feminist critics would argue, how can we understand and explain women's prolonged misery and distress? In turn, can we prevent or treat women s distress, in a non-pathologising women centred way? The Madness of Women addresses these questions through a rigorous exploration of the myths and realities of women's madness.

Drawing on academic and clinical experience, including case studies and in-depth interviews, as well as on the now extensive critical literature in the field of mental health, Jane Ussher presents a critical multifactorial analysis of women's madness that both addresses the notion that madness is a myth, and yet acknowledges the reality and multiple causes of women's distress. Topics include:

• The genealogy of women s madness incarceration of difficult or deviant women
• Regulation through treatment
• Deconstrucing depression, PMS and borderline personality disorder
• Madness as a reasonable response to objectification and sexual violence
• Women s narratives of resistance

This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of psychology, gender studies, sociology, women's studies, cultural studies, counselling and nursing.

Nominated for the 2012 Distinguished Publication Award of the Association for Women in Psychology

Why are women more likely to be positioned or diagnosed as mad than men?

If madness is a social construction, a gendered label, as many feminist critics would argue, how can we understand and explain women's prolonged misery and distress? In turn, can we prevent or treat women s distress, in a non-pathologising women centred way? The Madness of Women addresses these questions through a rigorous exploration of the myths and realities of women's madness.

Drawing on academic and clinical experience, including case studies and in-depth interviews, as well as on the now extensive critical literature in the field of mental health, Jane Ussher presents a critical multifactorial analysis of women's madness that both addresses the notion that madness is a myth, and yet acknowledges the reality and multiple causes of women's distress. Topics include:

• The genealogy of women s madness incarceration of difficult or deviant women
• Regulation through treatment
• Deconstrucing depression, PMS and borderline personality disorder
• Madness as a reasonable response to objectification and sexual violence
• Women s narratives of resistance

This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of psychology, gender studies, sociology, women's studies, cultural studies, counselling and nursing.

Child sexual abuse is a global problem that negatively affects many women and girls. As such, it has long been of concern to feminists, and more recently mental health activists. Women and Child Sexual Abuse draws on this revolutionary legacy to re-evaluate mainstream and feminist approaches to understanding women and child sexual abuse. The book aims to contribute to the ongoing development of a knowledge-base for working with abused women and girls.

Women and Child Sexual Abuse draws on feminism and post-structuralism to critically examine current perceptions of women, girls and child sexual abuse in psychology, psychiatry and the mass media. The book demonstrates the need to question the use of formulaic methods in working with abused women and girls, and calls for an explicit concern with politics, principles and ethics in the related areas of theory, research and practice.

Using research into women who have been sexually abused in childhood, andwho are detained in maximum security mental health care, Sam Warner explores and identifies key principles for practice. A social recovery model of intervention is developed, and case study examples are used to demonstrate its applicability in a range of practice areas. These include abuse psychotherapy; expert witness reports in child protection; with mothers of abused girls; and with women and girls in secure care contexts.

This thorough investigation of this emotive issue provides a clear theoretical and practical framework for understanding and coping with child sexual abuse. This book will be of interest to anyone who works with children and adults who have been sexually abused. This includes clinical psychologists, therapistsand other professionals that work in mental health, psychotherapy and social services; and legal settings within both community and secure care contexts. It should also be essential reading for students and academics in this area.

Accounting for Rape presents an original perspective on the subject of rape and sexual violence. The authors scrutinize existing social psychological experimental research on rape, in particular rape perception research, which, they argue, fails to analyse the subtlety and political significance of rape supportive reasoning and the forms that it takes, thus also underestimating the extent of rape supportive reasoning. The authors provide a critical interrogation of dominant theories and methodologies, and thought-provoking analyses of conversational data, exploring everyday accounting practices in relation to reports of both female and male rape. They synthesize discursive psychology and a feminist standpoint to explore precisely how rape and rape victimhood are defined in ways that reflect the social, political and cultural conditions of society.

They show how the gender and sexual orientation of alleged victims and perpetrators is crucial to social participants when making sense of a rape report and in apportioning blame and sympathy. They also examine how arguments that are critical of alleged victims are built in ways that are 'face saving' for the participants in the conversations, and how victim-blaming arguments are presented as 'common sense'. Crucial to this is the way in which rape supportive talk is underpinned by a range of deeply ingrained cultural sense-making resources that construct and legitimate hegemonic forms of heterosexual identities and gender relations and neo-liberal notions of ideal citizenship. Finally, the authors demonstrate the potential of the application for their approach in both professional and academic contexts to promote attitude change.

Thebook will be of great interest to those studying social and clinical psychology, cultural studies, sociology, women's studies and communication studies.

Wendy Hollway explores a subject that is largely absent from the topical literature on care. Humans are not born with a capacity to care, and this volume explores how this capacity is achieved through the experiences of primary care, gender development and later, parenting. In this book, the author addresses the assumption that the capacity to care is innate. She argues that key processes in the early development of babies and young children create the capability for individuals to care, with a focus on the role of intersubjective experience and parent-child relations. The Capacity to Care also explores the controversial belief that women are better at caring than men and questions whether this is likely to change with contemporary shifts in parenting and gender relations. Similarly, the sensitive domain of the quality of care and how to consider whether care has broken down are also debated, alongside a consideration of what constitutes a 'good enough' family. The Capacity to Care provides a unique theorization of the nature of selfhood, drawing on developmental and object relations psychoanalysis, as well as philosophical and feminist literatures. It will be of relevance to social scientists studying gender development, gender relations and the family as well as those interested in the ethics of care debate.

Psychology has traditionally examined human experience from a realist perspective, focusing on observable 'facts'. This is especially so in areas of psychology which focus on the body, such as sexuality, madness or reproduction. In contrast, many sociologists, anthropologists and feminists have focused exclusively on the cultural and communicative aspects of 'the body' treating it purely as an object constructed within socio-cultural discourse.
This new collection of sophisticated discursive analyses attempts to reconcile this divide by putting forward a new 'materialist-discursive' approach. It also provides an introduction to social constructionist and discursive approaches which is accessible to those with limited previous knowledge of socio-linguistic theory, and showcases the distinctive contribution that psychologists can make to the field.

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Clinical psychology has traditionally ignored gender issues. The result has been to the detriment of women both as service users and practitioners. The contributors to this book show how this has happened and explore the effects both on clients and clinicians. Focusing on different aspects of clinical psychology's organisation and practice, including child sexual abuse, family therapy, forensic psychology and individual feminist therapy, they demonstrate that it is essential that gender issues are incorporated into clinical research and practice, and offer examples of theory and practice which does not marginalise the needs of women.

Clinical psychology has traditionally ignored or marginalized gender issues. It tends to see the individual subject as gender neutral, and ignores many aspects of the individual, both as client and as practitioner. "Gender Issues in Clinical Psychology" argues that if clinical psychology is to work for both men and women, gender issues must be acknowledged and resolved. The contributors, leading researchers and practitioners in the field of clinical psychology, look at the position of women and men as practitioners, as objects of the scientific gaze, and as clients of the clinical psychologist. They argue that, by ignoring gender, clinical psychology perpetuates gender stereotypes and the oppression of women. Focusing on different aspects of clinical practice and organization, including feminist therapy, the contributors demonstrate that it is vital that gender issues are incorporated into clinical research and practice and offer examples of theory and practice which do not marginalize the needs of women. This book should be of interest to professionals in training and practice, undergraduates and academics; clinical psychology, psychiatry, health and gender studies.

Women and Depression: Recovery and Resistance takes a welcome look at women s experiences of living well after depression. Lafrance argues that the social construction of femininity is dangerous for women s health, and ultimately, central to their experiences of depression. Beginning with a critical examination of the ways in which women s depression is a product of the social, political, and interpersonal realities of their everyday lives, the analysis moves on to explore an often ignored aspect of women s experience how women manage to recover and be well after depression.

The book draws on extensive in-depth interviews with women who have been depressed, as well as on previous research and on analyses of representations of women s health practices in the media. In this way Lafrance critically examines how women negotiate and actively resist hegemonic discourses of femininity in their struggles to recover from depression and be well. Threaded throughout the analysis is the exploration of a variety of subjects related to women s distress and health, including:

• negotiating identity
• the medicalization of women s misery
• women s narratives of resistance
• the material and discursive context of women s self-care

In exploring the taken-for-granted aspects of women s experiences, Lafrance sheds light on the powerful but often invisible constraints on women s wellbeing, and the multiple and creative ways in which they resist these constraints in their everyday lives. These insights will be of interest to students and scholars of psychology, sociology, women s studies, social work, counseling, and nursing.

Gender Talk provides a powerful case for the application of discursive psychology and conversation analysis to feminism, guiding the reader through cutting edge debates and providing valuable evidence of the benefits of fine-grained, discursive methodologies. In particular, the book concentrates on discourse and conversation analysis, providing a full account of these methodologies through the detailed study of data from a variety of settings, including focus groups, interviews, and naturally occurring sources. Providing a thorough review of the relevant literature and recent research, this book demonstrates how discourse and conversation analysis can be applied to rework central feminist notions and concepts, ultimately revealing their full potential and relevance to other disciplines. Each chapter provides an overview of traditional feminist research and covers subjects including:
* Sex differences in language: conversation and interruption
* Reformulating context, power and asymmetry
* Gender identity categories: masculinity and femininity.
This unique and thought-provoking application of discursive and conversation analytic methodologies will be of interest to students and researchers in social psychology, sociology, gender studies and cultural studies.

The psychology of women's health is an area traditionally controlled by male-orientated scientists, psychologists and doctors. Women by definition have been unquestioningly seen and treated as deviant from the male norm. This model has been challenged by feminist historians and sociologists, but not by psychologists who seem to have implicitly accepted the medical models, and emphasized the pathology in women's behaviour and emotions. In this book, women's views and their experience of their own health and health care are taken seriously, and analyzed within a psychological and a feminist angle. It includes chapters from psychologists who work in research, teaching and practice. Paula Nicolson and Jane Ussher are co-editors of "Gender Issues in Clinical Psychology". Jane Ussher is the author of "The Psychology of the Female Body" and "Women's Madness: Mysogyny or Mental Illness".

"Gender Talk "presents a powerful case for the application of discursive psychology to feminism, guiding the reader through cutting-edge debates and providing valuable evidence of the benefits of discursive methodologies.
In particular, the book concentrates on discourse and conversation analysis, providing a full account of these methodologies through the detailed study of data from a variety of sources including focus group discussions and interviews. Providing a thorough review of the relevant literature and recent research, "Gender Talk" ""demonstrates how discourse and conversation analysis can be applied to rework central feminist notions and concepts, ultimately revealing their full potential and practical relevance to other disciplines. Each chapter provides an overview of traditional feminist research and, with examples, a conversation and discourse analysis of it, covers subjects including:
* sex differences in language: conversation and interruption
* reformulating context, power and asymmetry
* gender identity categories: masculinity and femininity.
This unique and thought-provoking treatment of the application of discursive methodologies will be of interest to students and researchers in social psychology, gender studies and cultural studies.

The new edition of "Beauty and Misogyny "revisits and updates Sheila Jeffreys' uncompromising critique of Western beauty practice and the industries and ideologies behind it. Jeffreys argues that beauty practices are not related to individual female choice or creative expression, but represent instead an important aspect of women's oppression. As these practices have become increasingly brutal and pervasive, the need to scrutinize and dismantle them is if anything more urgent now as it was in 2005 when the first edition of the book was published.

The United Nations concept of "harmful traditional/cultural practices" provides a useful lens for the author to advance her critique. She makes the case for including Western beauty practices within this definition, examining their role in damaging women's health, creating sexual difference and enforcing female deference.

First-wave feminists of the 1970s criticized pervasive beauty regimes such as dieting and depilation, but a later argument took hold that beauty practices were no longer oppressive now that women could "choose" them. In recent years the reality of Western beauty practices has become much more bloody and severe, requiring the breaking of skin and the rearrangement or amputation of body parts. "Beauty and Misogyny" seeks to make sense of why beauty practices have not only persisted but become more extreme. It examines the pervasive use of makeup, the misogyny of fashion and high-heeled shoes, and looks at the role of pornography in the creation of increasingly popular beauty practices such as breast implants, genital waxing, surgical alteration of the labia and other forms of self-mutilation. The book concludes by considering how a culture of resistance to these practices can be created.

A new and thoroughly updated edition of this essential work will appeal to all levels of students and teachers of gender studies, cultural studies and feminist psychology, and to anyone with an interest in feminism, women and beauty, and women's health."

Accounting for Rape presents an original perspective on the subject of rape and sexual violence. The authors scrutinize existing social psychological experimental research on rape, in particular rape perception research, which, they argue, fails to analyse the subtlety and political significance of rape supportive reasoning and the forms that it takes, thus also underestimating the extent of rape supportive reasoning. The authors provide a critical interrogation of dominant theories and methodologies, and thought-provoking analyses of conversational data, exploring everyday accounting practices in relation to reports of both female and male rape. They synthesize discursive psychology and a feminist standpoint to explore precisely how rape and rape victimhood are defined in ways that reflect the social, political and cultural conditions of society.

They show how the gender and sexual orientation of alleged victims and perpetrators is crucial to social participants when making sense of a rape report and in apportioning blame and sympathy. They also examine how arguments that are critical of alleged victims are built in ways that are 'face saving' for the participants in the conversations, and how victim-blaming arguments are presented as 'common sense'. Crucial to this is the way in which rape supportive talk is underpinned by a range of deeply ingrained cultural sense-making resources that construct and legitimate hegemonic forms of heterosexual identities and gender relations and neo-liberal notions of ideal citizenship. Finally, the authors demonstrate the potential of the application for their approach in both professional and academic contexts to promote attitude change.

Thebook will be of great interest to those studying social and clinical psychology, cultural studies, sociology, women's studies and communication studies.

Managing the Monstrous Feminine takes a unique approach to the study of the material and discursive practices associated with the construction and regulation of the female body. Jane Ussher examines the ways in which medicine, science, the law and popular culture combine to produce fictions about femininity, positioning the reproductive body as the source of women's power, danger and weakness. Including sections on 'regulation', 'the subjectification of women' and 'women's negotiation and resistance', this book describes the construction of the 'monstrous feminine' in mythology, art, literature and film, revealing its implications for the regulation and experience of the fecund female body. Critical reviews are combined with case studies and extensive interview material to illuminate discussions of subjects including: the regulation of women through the body regimes of knowledge associated with reproduction intersubjectivity and the body women's narratives of resistance. These insights into the relation between the construction of the female body and women's subjectivity will be of interest to those studying health psychology, social psychology, medical sociology, gender studies and cultural studies. The book will also appeal to all those looking for a high-level introduction to contemporary feminist thought on the female body.

Award-winning photographer Jane Ussher spent several weeks in Te Papa's natural history collection storage areas shooting this outstanding book, and the result is a true treasure. Stunningly photographed and beautifully designed, its 157 images capture the glory of the insect, fish, mollusc and botanical specimens that represent the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa's vast and scientifically important collections. Te Papa's expert curators and collections managers have written the short texts about each natural history object, giving concise and unique insights into the fascinating characteristics of each of them. From photographs of huia and kakapo to vivid x-rays of fish, gloriously coloured moths and butterflies, unique mosses, and lichens collected in Antarctica, this outstanding book pays tribute to the glories of our natural world.

Winner of the 2009 Feminist & Women's Studies Association (UK & Ireland) Book Award

Many women find mothering a shocking experience in terms of the extremity of feelings it provokes, and the profound changes it seems to prompt in identity, relationship and sense of self. However, although motherhood can catapult us into a state of internal disarray, it can also provide us with a unique chance to make ourselves anew. How then do we understand this radical potential for transformation within maternal experience? In Maternal Encounters, Lisa Baraitser takes up this question through the analysis of a series of maternal anecdotes, charting key destabilizing moments in the life of just one mother, and using these to discuss many questions that have remained resistant to theoretical analysis the possibility for a specific feminine-maternal subjectivity, relationality and reciprocity, ethics and otherness.

Working across contemporary philosophies of feminist ethics, as well as psychoanalysis and social theory, the maternal subject, in Baraitser s account, becomes an emblematic and enigmatic formation of a subjectivity called into being through a relation to another she comes to name and claim as her child. As she navigates through the peculiarity of maternal experience, Baraitser takes us on a journey in which the mother emerges in the most unlikely, precarious and unstable of places as a subject of alterity, transformation, interruption, heightened sentience, viscosity, encumberment and love.

This book presents a major new theory of maternal subjectivity, and an innovative and accessible way into our understanding of contemporary motherhood. As such, it will be of interest to students of family studies, gender studies, psychoanalysis, critical psychology and feminist philosophy as well as counselling and psychotherapy.

Wendy Hollway explores a subject that is largely absent from the topical literature on care. Humans are not born with a capacity to care, and this volume explores how this capacity is achieved through the experiences of primary care, gender development and later, parenting. In this book, the author addresses the assumption that the capacity to care is innate. She argues that key processes in the early development of babies and young children create the capability for individuals to care, with a focus on the role of intersubjective experience and parent-child relations. The Capacity to Care also explores the controversial belief that women are better at caring than men and questions whether this is likely to change with contemporary shifts in parenting and gender relations. Similarly, the sensitive domain of the quality of care and how to consider whether care has broken down are also debated, alongside a consideration of what constitutes a 'good enough' family. The Capacity to Care provides a unique theorization of the nature of selfhood, drawing on developmental and object relations psychoanalysis, as well as philosophical and feminist literatures. It will be of relevance to social scientists studying gender development, gender relations and the family as well as those interested in the ethics of care debate.