Making Connections: The Relational Worlds of Adolescent Girls at Emma Willard School

Making Connections maps new territory in the field of psychology. The essays in this volume are “a series of exercises en route to a new psychology of adolescence and women…[and] part of a process that they also describe: of changing a tradition by including girls’ voices, of listening to girls and asking again about the meaning of self, relationship, and morality―concepts central to any psychology of human development… Each essay originated with a question that arose or became clarified in the experience of the research. No attempt has been made to unify these essays or to arrive at a central thesis, beyond the common intention to listen for the ways in which girls orchestrate themes of connection and separation and concerns about care and justice in speaking about themselves, about their relationships, and about experiences of conflict…

“When Women’s Studies is joined with the study of girls development it becomes clearer why adolescence is a critical time in girls’ lives―a time when girls are in danger of losing their voices and thus losing connection with others, and also a time when girls, gaining voice and knowledge, are in danger of knowing the unseen and speaking the unspoken and thus losing connection with what is commonly taken to be ‘reality.’ This crisis of connection in girls’ lives at adolescence links the psychology of women with the most basic questions about the nature of relationships and the definition of reality. Girls questions about relationships and about reality, however, also tug at women’s silences.”