Gender-fair psychotherapy in the United States: A possible dream?

Abstract

Since Freud's era, women have been counseling and psychotherapy's largest consumers. White Freud talked and wrote almost exclusively about men, his patients were primarily women. This practice of treating women as patients, while perceiving men as the prevailing standard for percept and practice has resulted in the largely androcentric or mate-determined psychology of human behavior which we have today (Denmark, 1980; Hare-Mustin, 1983). A number of studies commencing with the Broverman's work in the 1970(s) has demonstrated that psychotherapists, for the most part, share the same sex role biases toward women as the rest of society (Broverman et al., 1970; Fabrikant, 1973, 1974; Nickerson, 1978; Orlinsky & Howard, 1980). Most disconcerting, however, is a recent extensive replication of the Brovermans' study (O'Malley & Richardson, 1985), using 249 counselors, which found that they still described males and females in stereotypic ways, though they did attribute some female designated traits to healthy adults. The evidence regarding the measured effects of therapists' attitudes, whether reportedly biased or gender-fair, however, is mixed in nature and replete with methodological problems (Maffeo, 1979; Marachek & Johnson, 1980; Orlinsky & Howard, 1980; Smith, 1980; Whiteley, 1979); as is the evidence for effectiveness of therapy generally (Garfield, 1981). Some have argued that a counselor's values and expectations do not matter, as long as she or he is aware and does not impose them (Smith, 1980; Whiteley, 1979). It would seem equally probable, based on other evidence that choice of therapeutic goals and processes can be influenced by the therapist's expectations (Brovermans et al., 1970; Nickerson, 1978; O'Malley & Richardson, 1985). The crucial point is that in a sexist society (Such as the United States), it is improbable that anyone without special non-sexist, gender-fair training can adequately aid women in exercising their independence and selecting their goals. Hence, a format is presented for insuring the dream of gender-fair counseling through the inclusion of appropriate training experiences and materials.