Reviving Ophelia

Table of Contents

 

 

“Pipher is an eloquent advocate.... With sympathy and focus she cites case histories to illustrate the struggles required of adolescent girls to maintain a sense of themselves.... Pipher offers concrete suggestions for ways by which girls can build and maintain a strong sense of self.”

—
Publishers Weekly

 

“Pipher integrates literature, memoirs, and memories of her own adolescence and that of her daughter; she also has a deft way of summing up psychological phenomena in layperson’s terms.... Serious and thoughtful material presented with the fluidity of good fiction.”

—
Kirkus Reviews

 

“A must read for all of us who care about the young women in our lives ...
Reviving Ophelia
arms us with information we can use in helping our daughters grow to adulthood with their strength intact.”

—
Lincoln Star Journal

“This book is the first to explore carefully the many aspects of adolescence. It does so without blaming, vilifying, or shouting ‘Victim here.’ Instead Dr. Pipher uses clear, jargonless language and fascinating stories to challenge readers to look at what our culture does to teenage girls. Parents, teachers, and therapists alike will profit from Dr. Pipher’s knowledge.”

—Dr. MARY KENNING
Juvenile Justice System
Minneapolis

“Adolescent girls have always fallen through the cracks, but now they are tumbling into a chasm. Dr. Pipher goes deep inside their world and comes back with a clearheaded and compassionate report. We owe it to ourselves and our daughters to read this book.”

—CAROL SPINDEL

Also by
MARY PIPHER ,
PH. D.

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All clients are composite characters drawn from my life experience and clinical work. Names and details have be changed to protect confidentiality.

Copyright © 1994 by Mary Pipher, Ph.D.

 

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

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PRINTING HISTORY

First Ballantine Books trade paperback edition: March 1995

First Riverhead trade paperback edition: July 2005

eISBN : 978-1-101-07776-4

 

 

Pipher, Mary Bray.

Reviving Ophelia : saving the selves of adolescent girls / Mary Pipher.

p. cm.

eISBN : 978-1-101-07776-4

1. Teenage girls—Psychology—Case studies. 2. Teenage girls—Family relationships—Case studies. 3. Self-esteem in adolescence—Case studies. I. Title.

HQ798.P

305.23—dc20

 

 

Thank you to my family—Jim, Zeke and Sara and all the Brays, Pages and Piphers.

I appreciate my writers’ groups—Nebraska Wesleyan Writers’ Group and Prairie Trout. I thank these writers for their help with this project: Pam Barger, Claudia Bepko, Carol Bly, Emilie Buchwald, Paul Gruchow, Twyla Hansen, Carolyn Johnsen, Jo-Anne Krestan, Margaret Nemoede, Marjorie Saiser, Leon Satterfield, Carol Spindel and Elizabeth Weber. I thank my writing teachers: Kent Haruf, Bill Kloefkorn and my first teacher, Charles Stubblefield.

The following people helped me with the book: Nancy Bare, Randy Barger, Beatty Brasch, Ellen Brt, Laura Freeman, Sherri Hanigan, Anna Harms, Sally Jones, Karen Kelly, Brooke and Cathy Kindler, Mary Kenning, Dixie Lubin, Jane Masheter, Frank McPherson, Natalie Porter, Carrie Rodgerson, Jan and Amy Stenberg, Susan Whitmore and Jan Zegers. And I thank all my clients, whom I cannot name, for the many lessons they have taught me.

I thank my friend and editor, Jane Isay, and her assistant, Rona Cohen. I thank my literary agent, Susan Lee Cohen.

When I wrote
Hunger Pains: The American Women’s Tragic Quest for Thinness
in the 1980s, I was attempting to understand the epidemic of eating disorders that had hit women in our community. I asked myself, Why is this happening to so many women now? I found many answers in an analysis of the culture and its message to women about weight and beauty.

Reviving Ophelia
is my attempt to understand my experiences in therapy with adolescent girls. Many girls come into therapy with serious, even life-threatening problems, such as anorexia or the desire to physically hurt or kill themselves. Others have problems less dangerous but still more puzzling, such as school refusal, underachievement, moodiness or constant discord with their parents. Many are the victims of sexual violence.

As I talked to these girls, I became aware of how little I really understood about the world of adolescent girls today. It didn’t work to use my own adolescent experience from the early 1960s to make generalizations. Girls were living in a whole new world.

As a therapist, I often felt bewildered and frustrated. These feelings led to questions: Why are so many girls in therapy in the 1990s? Why are there more self-mutilators? What is the meaning of lip, nose and eyebrow piercings? How do I help thirteen-year-olds deal with herpes or genital warts? Why are drugs and alcohol so common in the stories of seventh-graders? Why do so many girls hate their parents?

Meanwhile my own daughter was in adolescence. She and her friends were riding a roller coaster. Sometimes they were happy and interested in their world; other times they just seemed wrecked. They were hard on their families and each other. Particularly junior high seemed like a crucible. Many confident, well-adjusted girls were transformed into sad and angry failures.

Many of my friends had daughters in adolescence. When we talked we were confused, angry and unsure how to proceed. Many of us felt tormented by our daughters, who seemed upset with us for the smallest things. We had raised our daughters to be assertive and confident, and they seemed to be insecure and concerned with their femininity. One dilemma came up again and again: How could we encourage our daughters to be independent and autonomous and still keep them safe? How could we inspire them to take on the world when it was a world that included kidnappers and date rapists? Even in our small city with its mostly middle-class population, girls often experienced trauma. How could we help girls heal from that trauma? And what could we do to prevent it?

This last year I have struggled to make sense of this. Why are girls having more trouble now than my friends and I had when we were adolescents? Many of us hated our adolescent years, yet for the most part we weren’t suicidal and we didn’t develop eating disorders, cut ourselves or run away from home.

At first blush, it seems things should be better now. After all, we have the women’s movement. Hasn’t that helped? The answer, as I think about it, is yes and no. Many of my friends, middle-aged and middle-class women like myself, are entitled in ways few women have been since the beginning of time. Many of us are doing things our mothers never dreamed of doing.

But girls today are much more oppressed. They are coming of age in a more dangerous, sexualized and media-saturated culture. They face incredible pressures to be beautiful and sophisticated, which in junior high means using chemicals and being sexual. As they navigate a more dangerous world, girls are less protected.

As I looked at the culture that girls enter as they come of age, I was struck by what a girl-poisoning culture it was. The more I looked around, the more I listened to today’s music, watched television and movies and looked at sexist advertising, the more convinced I became that we are on the wrong path with our daughters. America today limits girls’ development, truncates their wholeness and leaves many of them traumatized.

This book is an attempt to share my thinking with parents, educators, health and mental-health professionals, policymakers and anyone else who works for and with girls. It’s also for girls. In the sixties Betty Friedan wrote of “the problem with no name.” She pointed out that many women were miserable but couldn’t articulate the source of that misery. Adolescent girls today also face a problem with no name. They know that something is very wrong, but they tend to look for the source within themselves or their families rather than in broader cultural problems. I want to help them see their lives in the context of larger cultural forces.

I believe that most Americans share the concerns I have for our daughters. Hillary Rodham Clinton, Tipper Gore, Janet Reno, Marian Wright Edelman and many others are sounding the alarm. I hope this book offers a description of a particular point in girls’ lives. With puberty girls crash into junk culture. One way to think about all the pain and pathology of adolescence is to say that the culture is just too hard for most girls to understand and master at this point in their development. They become overwhelmed and symptomatic.