WHAT DO WOMEN WANT: Exploding the Myth of Dependency

by Luise & Susie Orbach Eichenbaum ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 28, 1982

Whatever women want, they have nothing to gain from advocacy of such an uncertain nature. Eichenbaum and Orbach are the feminist-psychotherapist founders of women's therapy centers in New York and London--where ""thousands"" of aggrieved women have purportedly related pretty much the same tale. Colette Dowling, they explain, was all wrong in The Cinderella Complex: ""while her case studies are accurate, she lacks the psychoanalytic or clinical understanding to draw the correct conclusions."" In other words, she failed to distinguish between the economic dependence foisted on women through faulty socialization, and true emotional dependence, which has been foisted on men through their faulty socialization. Women's supposed emotional superiority notwithstanding, the authors are at pains to portray individual women whose happiness depends on men's being ""really there"" for them (when women feel this way, it's interdependence). The problem is, we're told, that women spend a great deal of time attending to the needs of others and denying their own needs, which leads to ""private anguish"" and ""quiet despair,"" Thus, men have the security of a ""home base"" from which to go independently into the world, but women don't. Wearisome.

Pub Date: Feb. 28, 1982

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Coward, McCann & Geoghegan

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1982

Categories: NONFICTION