Cultural Resistance

In everyday life--in relationships, in various institutions, in texts--cultural premises influence and sometimes limit individuals’thoughts, actions, and ideas. Cultural Resistance: Challenging Beliefs About Men, Women, and Therapy analyzes cultural constraints and encourages therapists, individuals, and communities to practice cultural resistance on a daily basis, allowing for the realization of diverse and suppressed knowledges. Cultural Resistance shows general patterns by which some ideas in a culture become accepted and others are marginalized. It proposes ways individuals and communities can resist the hold of limiting ideas on their lives. In the postmodern tradition, Editor Kathy Weingarten brings together authors who ask and offer answers to the question, “What is not present in our thinking?” Each chapter invites therapists to extend their thinking about the scope of their work. Topics covered include:

• challenging cultural beliefs about mothers
• transforming masculine identities
• lesbian and gay parents
• a narrative approach to anorexia/bulimia
• perspectives on the Black woman and sexual trauma, focusing on Thomas v. Hill
• opening therapy to conversations with a personal god
• new conversations on controversial issuesThe chapters in Cultural Resistance first describe cultural premises that constrain the lives of women, men, and/or therapists and then develop an approach to resisting these constraints. A response follows each chapter in an effort to promote discourse, extend meanings, and encourage learning between professionals.Cultural Resistance yields new perspectives on the nature of social change and the relationships between individuals and culture. It offers valuable insights to family therapists, psychiatrists, psychologists, and social workers who want to broaden their thinking and approach. It gives therapists a fresh, new way of thinking about themselves, others, and their conversations through applications which may be professional, personal, or both.

Kaethe Weingarten