Statement On The Decisions And Actions Resulting From FTI’s Steering Committee Meeting Held In Chicago On April 25 & 26, 2003
We had an important Chicago steering committee meeting in which we considered the state of FTI, feminist therapy and the broader forces active in women's mental health. We made several vital decisions about the directions for FTI. This statement is intended to communicate to members these changes and to share with you some of the reasoning leading to the decisions made. Critical to the discussion were the following factors which contribute to the present socio‑political realities and which provided a context for the decisions: the critical issues facing women and other non‑dominant groups at present; the abridgment of civil and democratic rights; the drastic cuts of tax dollar support for human needs in welfare, education and health care; the loss of hard won protection for multiple forms of living and working arrangements in the home; and government supported racism abroad. Also relevant to our decisions are the lack of action, complicity or silence by mainstream and progressive mental health organization to these issues and especially the silence of our FTI.
The result of the first set of concerns was the control of physical and mental health by corporations in conjunction with governmental and professional bodies, and the resulting effects on our work. We argued that the effects of this control can be seen in the fact that too few can afford insurance and, therefore, go without services, since the few remaining free or reduced services are overburdened and under‑resourced. For those who are lucky enough to have insurance, the control is of such a degree that professionals are allowed to offer barely adequate and often incompetent therapy services. We also noted the complicity of academics and researchers in this control process. Such complicity is evident when we seek grant money to do empirical research in search of measured change, defined operationally, in the service of keeping people functioning in the economy. It can also be seen when we attempt to reduce an individual's stress levels, emotions and thoughts, by the use of techniques, and neurotransmitters or synthetically produced chemicals, and when we adopt theories and practices limiting their considerations to only the individual and the family and embracing remediation to conformity to mainstream social norms. Further our professional special interest groups and State Board s of Registration reflect these perspectives in today's education and standards of ethical practice. Efforts to change the environment and to relate our work and the individual's stress to the political are ignored and yet, both resistance to the political forces and the interconnections between the individual's distress and disorders and the socio‑economic‑political forces are vitally needed.
We decided that the Feminist Therapy Institute should engage directly in the above issues by taking social/political action in local and professional groups in respect of education and policy changes and by taking actions toward resistance in local communities with like‑minded groups. Although a large number of FTI members have participated in such progressive activities, we have not, up to the present time, seen them as FTI business. This must be changed. FTI has expanded its defined role to include progressive action and resistance in the mental health and related policy and practices.
We also spoke of broadening our Institute to incorporate feminist practice, beyond feminist therapy. We discussed the fact that the state of the nation, the globe, as well as our own feminist therapy principles and ethics code, obliges us to work for social change. While social change efforts are daunting and sometimes outside the skill set of therapists, we have among this group, members with skills in analysis and in social organizing. And we have other progressive sisters and brothers with whom to ally. While we no longer have the 60's hope of changing the world, in the 21st century there is the very real need to work locally while thinking globally. We therefore decided to begin to look at our existing skills and to start to work in local social/political/ professional contexts as part of the practice of feminist therapists.
Finally, we took the decision to expand membership of the FTI to graduate students and young professionals. The need to develop and try out one's feminist analysis and practice in a supportive and safe place, once necessary for Feminist Therapy's development, has now become a need students and young professionals who do not‑find support or tolerance for their feminist ideas in their academic programs, internships and their jobs. The same support that the Institute once created for the early women who developed feminist therapy, must now be passed on to the next generation of feminist women who want to engage in feminist therapy, practice and analysis. We have decided to expand the membership and reorient our organization to achieve these goals. We will organize the next AFTI with the expansion of membership in mind and encourage members to continue to find other ways to act in social, educational and professional contexts beyond the practice of therapy.
These are exciting development in the Feminist Therapy Institute. The Steering Committee is at work implementing the decisions. The recent conference in Boston demonstrated to us that there is interest and need and that a new generation of feminists is ready to join with us in actions that matter. There are new membership criteria and applications to be done, members to re‑energize and choruses of voices to be heard. We have also to begin to think consciously and develop mechanisms about expanded practice and liaison with others for local social/political work as part of feminist therapy's social change efforts and feminist ethics. If you are interested in joining with us in this new work, let us know by joining the discussions in the list serve, contacting the steering committee info@feministtherapyinstitute.org) or me, Mary Ballou, to let us know what you would like to support and contribute to.
Mary Ballou, Chair
Mary Margaret Hart, Treasurer, Membership Co‑chair
Lyn Jones, Membership Co‑chair
Susie Kisber, Website Coordinator
Kim Wands, Secretary, Committee Coordinator
by Natalie S. Eldridge
What a wonderful experience this AFTI was for me…an integrative, re-energizing, and perspective giving light in a dark time. I am particularly grateful for the opportunity to honor the work of FTI in the past 20 years, as well as the lives and work of feminists both within and outside of the FTI family. It was a rich experience to hear such eloquent perspectives on the honorees’ work by our esteemed presenters, followed by open, personal reflections from the honorees about the people and events that shaped their lives and work.
Ruth Parvin remembered feminists who have died, leaving us with important legacies and inspiration. Susan Contratto then provided a comprehensive historical perspective on groundbreaking work on the cycle of domestic violence that has created an understanding affecting the law and brought feminists into the courtroom on behalf of victims of violence. Susan Barrett presented the critical influences of voices that have “made visible the invisible” in bringing to light the experience of diverse groups of women within the feminist discourse. Denny Webster blended her task as an academic administrator with her clinical perspectives to reflect on the enormous contributions made by Judy Herman in our understanding and explication of the impact of trauma. Carolyn West eloquently described the template of the Relational-Cultural model coming out of the Stone Center, placing it on the larger map of femin ist therapy theory. Natalie Porter described the radical and groundbreaking work that both gets integrated into our general theory, and continues to push us to shift our paradigms toward new understandings.
One grounding counterpoint to the huge literature and clinical legacy represented by these presenters were their personal perspectives, describing one of many examples of insight and significance in each woman’s work. Another grounding counterpoint was the honorees’ presence as real women, shaped by family, by history, by experience, and weaving themselves into an ongoing tapestry of growth we are all engaged in.
In thinking about our present and future challenges on Sunday morning, I felt a foundational theme that the personal is political, and the political is personal. Our conversation moved effortlessly from writing to our representatives in congress,to visions of a one-payer system, to the centrality of spiritual practice, to carrying on threads of truth and meaning honored in the day before.
I particularly recall Clare Holtzman remembering the words of Jeanne Adleman, to “listen with the intent to learn.” I was reminded that being feminist therapy practitioners is about what we do in every part of our lives, and the contextual whole in which we conduct the “work” we do as c linicians, teachers, or consultants.
Finally, I was thrilled to have AFTI in my hometown. This allowed a blending of my FTI family and my Stone Center family that I found deeply integrative. Thank you, Mary Ballou and the entire organizing committee, for such a fabulous AFTI!
by Marcia Hill
Susan Barrett's list of the assumptions that white women are still at risk for making (e.g., that "we" don't value older people or that "we" value doing over being)...
Bev Greene talking about her parents' challenges in "raising children that the world was going to be attempting to teach to hate themselves"...
Oliva Espin's observation that "each language has a way of thinking about the world...that has to do with who people then become" (e.g. in English one says "I missed the train," and in Spanish it would be "The train left me.")...
Judith Herman, in describing being in a consciousness-rais ing group at the same time as she did her psychiatric residency, asserting that "the more empirical method [between C-R groups and psychiatric training] was the consciousness-raising" and issuing "a plea for a continuing empirical project"...and later, in talking about cross-cultural factors in trauma, saying "There's something about the human being that doesn't want to be hurt or humiliated and that objects to being dominated. There's also something about the human being that wants to dominate".....
Judith Jordan, noting that "we were talking about a model of human development that would be quite relevant to...social revolution" and declaring that "a model of connection and collaboration is resistance".....
Jean Baker Miller's comment about why domination and violence is endemic in this culture: "when you don't have a society that's based on mutuality, then you have a society based on power-over".....
Ellyn Kaschak's observation that she is "very interested in the fact that we got the word 'victim' and they got the word 'compassion.' I want to make a bid today for compassionate radicalism".....and later, in talking about having been ill: "I've learned to celebrate the gravity and the levity of the undefended heart".....
Oliva Espin, in the large group discussion about the difficulties of isolation in the practice of therapy, commenting that "Isolation is the unavoidable consequence of individualism, and psychotherapy is one of the most individualistic enterprises that there is."
