Читать книгу Counseling the Contemporary Woman - Suzanne Degges-White - Страница 24

Feminist clinicians desire to empower clients to discover and articulate their therapeutic goals as well as empower clients to work toward these goals. While most of us would say that we “know empowerment when we see it,” Worell (1993) developed a model that identified ten specific behaviors that would be present as evidence of empowerment as a woman took control of her own well-being. These included the following: self-evaluation; comfort–distress ratio (comfort would increase while feelings of distress would decrease); gender- and culture-role awareness; personal control/self-efficacy; self-nurturance; problem-solving skills; assertiveness; resource access; gender and cultural flexibility; and social activism. Brown (2018) further specified that empowerment is, in essence, liberating clients from their own internalized forms of oppression in order for them to gain power to intentionally confront their external obstacles.

Taken together, these ten behaviors inform a model in which an individual is able to perceive both the influences of the external culture on her beliefs and behaviors while acknowledging her own role in choosing to reject harmful cultural expectations and in practicing appropriate self-care. Each of the ten areas of assessment affirms the belief that all clients are capable of being responsible for their own well-being, which can be likened to the perspective of Carl Rogers and client-centered therapy (Proctor & Napier, 2004; Wolter-Gustafson, 2004). Client-centered therapy focuses on helping clients become more congruent; congruency exists when one’s experiencing of the world matches one’s sense of self. Feminist therapy has a similar focus in helping clients reach empowerment as a way to feel in control of their own lives within a cultural paradigm over which they hold little control. Power is not perceived of as an “all or nothing” construct within feminist thought. Power exists on a continuum and even when a client feels that they possess no power, clinicians help clients to understand ways they do hold power, even if its magnitude is not yet as significant as the client may wish (Brown, 2018).