Bridging Separate Gender Worlds: Why Men and Women Clash and How Therapists Can Bring Them Together

Once, men and women knew what to expect from each other. Men went out to work and women stayed at home to care for the family. The gender revolution of the last 40 years has exploded these easy assumptions. Although these changes have provided many benefits for men and women, they have also left many of either gender feeling misunderstood and dissatisfied in heterosexual relationships. This work provides therapists with gender-sensitive techniques and interventions to help their clients understand the challenges of today's confused gender expectations. Applicable to individual, couples and therapy, this volume offers practical techniques to lead clients to an empathic understanding of their own, and their partner's, gender experiences. The authors offer three models of interventions for working with different types of clients. These practical solutions can help therapists transform angry confrontations and helpless confusions into non-blaming empathy and change. The volume also provides a detailed discussion of the process of traditional gender socialization, how the women's movement of the 1960s altered these old assumptions and the confused and often acrimonious state couples find themselves in today. The reader should be left understanding why so many "new" men and women seem to be struggling with the same old problems. This book extends the work that has been done in feminism and the emerging fields of men's studies by exploring how these two movements interact and complement each other. Backed up by research and illustrated with case examples, this volume provides therapists and students with a resource for exploring gender issues within the therapeutic relationship.