Transgenerational discourses of gender among Polish psychotherapists: An exploratory study

Abstract

ABSTRACT The interest of this paper is in the gender roles and social expectations concerning femininity and masculinity as perceived and reported on by the Polish female and male psychotherapists of two generations. This is discussed in the context of socio-cultural changes in Poland that took place in the twentieth century and their consequences and implications for issues around gender roles. To this end, reflexive thematic analysis was applied to a corpus of statements on gender-related family messages offered by 121 male and female Polish psychotherapists of two different age groups. The aim was to identify and examine psychotherapists’ gender-related transgenerational scripts. The analysis revealed the construction of the Polish men and women in terms of binary oppositions regardless of the age of the participants. Although the findings generally reflect more global concepts of essentialist femininity and masculinity, their local significance to the changing gender roles and relations in Poland is discussed. The implications of transgenerational gender assumptions to the work of therapists are addressed.