Psychological Women's Liberation: Feminist Therapy Between Psychology and the Women's Movement in the Federal Republic of Germany in the 1970s

Abstract

From the late 1960s onwards, the early second women's movement encompassed all areas of West German society. This included debates about how women's healthcare could be improved in aself-determined, women-friendly way and in line with feminist ideals. These debates were also held with regard to the general boom in psychotherapy at the time. This article explores the question of how debates around feminist therapy emerged in the Federal Republic of Germany. It also looks at the tense relationship between psychology and psychotherapy. While feminist women's counselling and therapy centers became awidespread part of apsychosocial care network from the late 1970s onwards, scientific psychology in German speaking countries remained largely closed to feminist influences. The article traces how this imbalance between feminist therapeutic practice and psychological women's research came about. Therefore, the article sets out from 1974, when psychologists tried to introduce feminist impulses into academic psychology and feminist activists made psychotherapeutic approaches usable for the women's movement. Many female psychologists shifted their commitment from the academic to the therapeutic field. It is argued, that this was due to the less than conducive conditions that feminist-oriented psychologists found in German-speaking academic psychology.