Women's Experience of Feminist Therapy and Counselling - MCLEOD

Feminist therapy and counselling and therapy is developing worldwide. Eileen McLeod's analysis presents women participants' own experiences and views. These constitute a critique of the impact of social inequalities on personal relationships and of the theory and practice of feminist therapy and counselling.

This critique argues that: 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; and initiatives beyond therapy and counselling - tackling a range of social inequalities - are also essential to realizing women's emotional wellbeing.