Title
The Myth of Empowerment : Women and the Therapeutic Culture in America / Dana Becker.
ISBN
9780814738405
Published
New York, NY : : New York University Press, [2005]
Copyright
©2005
Language
English
Language Note
In English.
Description
1 online resource
Other Standard Identifiers
10.18574/nyu/9780814738405.001.0001 doi
Call Number
RC451.4.W6
Dewey Decimal Classification
362.10820973
Summary
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 her ability 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.
Access Note
Access limited to authorized users.
System Details Note
Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.
Digital File Characteristics
text file PDF
Source of Description
Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 18. Sep 2023)
Frontmatter
Contents
Acknowledgments
Prologue
1 Introduction
2 In the Self's Country: Individualism in America
3 Romancing the Self: From Mind Cure to Psychotherapy
4 American Nervousness and the Social Uses of Science
5 Long Day's Journey: From Sentimental Power to Professional Expertise
Interlude: Feminism and the Ongoing Dialectic of Equality versus Difference
6 Psychological Woman and the Paradox of Relational Individualism
7 The Myth of Empowerment
8 American Nervousness Redux: Women and the Discourse of Stress
Afterword
Notes
Index
About the Author
