Word: chesler
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...eyes of ardent feminists, psychiatrists and psychologists rank high-if not highest-on the list of males who oppress women. The most recent and radical statement of this view is a book called Women and Madness (Doubleday; $8.95) by Phyllis Chesler, a self-styled anarchist who teaches psychology at the City University of New York. The militant wing of Women's Lib enthusiastically approves Author Chesler's attack, and some psychotherapists admit that there is a measure of truth in what she says. The consensus, however, seems to be that her charges are both overstated and underdocumented...
...Chesler uses statistics to launch her assault. About 90% of U.S. psychiatrists and psychologists are male, but their patients in hospitals, clinics and private therapy are predominantly female, she says. She claims, for instance, that women make up two-thirds of the patients in private treatment-even though only 51% of the population is female. In fact, reliable statistics on private patients are impossible to come by. But assuming that Chesler is essentially correct, why is the proportion of women so high? The answer, she maintains, is that psychiatrists subscribe to a double standard of mental health: independent, assertive...
...Chesler also charges that therapists consider women to be inferior beings. In treatment, she insists, women are encouraged to talk instead of to act, to live passively instead of being active and to conform to a "feminine" role. They are forced to re-enact with their patriarchal therapists the role that initially made them sick: little girls in thrall to their fathers. Worst of all, women patients are often sexually exploited by male therapists, Chesler alleges...
...professional who agrees in part with Chesler is Manhattan Psychoanalyst Natalie Shainess: "Many psychiatrists are unconsciously contemptuous of women," she says. Isaiah Zimmerman, a psychologist in Washington, D.C., doubts that therapists of his age (44) can entirely overcome the effects of their rearing in a male-oriented society. "My generation won't make it," he admits. All the same, alerted by his wife, daughters and patients to minor signs of his own bias (habitual use of the pronoun he instead of she, for instance), Zimmerman reports that he has brought about some "moderately profound changes" in himself...