Phyllis Chesler
b. 1940 · American psychologist, psychotherapist and feminist writer
Phyllis Chesler (born 1940) is an American writer, psychotherapist and professor emerita of psychology and women's studies at the College of Staten Island (CUNY). She is usually counted among the second-wave feminist psychologists, and her name is tied to the critique of how psychiatry and psychology have treated women.
Raised in a working-class Orthodox Jewish family in Brooklyn, she was involved as a young woman in left-wing Zionist youth movements, though she kept rebelling against her religious upbringing. At Bard College she met an Afghan Muslim man, whom she married in 1961. Her stay in Kabul, where she was largely confined to her in-laws' household, pushed her toward a more militant feminism. She earned a Ph.D. in psychology from the New School for Social Research in 1969.
Her best-known book, Women and Madness (1972), argues that mental health standards work with double standards and that women are often labelled according to gender, race, class or sexual preference. Later works have addressed motherhood, divorce, child custody, surrogacy, prostitution and violence against women, and more recently antisemitism, women in Islam and honor killings. Her positions on these last subjects are controversial and have sparked considerable debate.
Her influence is most visible in feminist critiques of psychiatry and in the growth of women's studies programs, although her recent views divide her readers.
Key ideas
- Double standards in mental health: the same behaviour may be read as illness in some women and as normal in others, depending on gender, race or class.
- Critique of psychiatry: psychiatric diagnosis has often been used to punish or control women.
- Feminism as institutional change: public institutions must be shaped by feminist values so that they cannot be turned against women.
- Motherhood and custody: opposition to courts that separate mothers from their children and to surrogacy contracts.
- Multicultural relativism: the claim that parts of the Western left and feminism have set aside the defence of women's rights and religious minorities in the name of cultural relativism.
Curiosities
A stay that changed her course
After arriving in Kabul in 1961, Afghan authorities took her US passport and she was largely confined to her in-laws' home. She says the experience pushed her toward a more militant feminism.
A widely read book
Women and Madness (1972) sold more than three million copies worldwide. Adrienne Rich reviewed it on the front page of The New York Times.
Original Filopedia text based on Wikipedia (en) and Wikidata.