Latina Realities: Essays on Healing, Migration, and Sexuality by Oliva Espin

Author:Oliva Espin [Espin, Oliva]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Political Science, General
ISBN: 9780429967863
Google: SQDFDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2018-02-20T10:35:19+00:00

Issues of Sexuality in Psychotherapy with Hispanic Women

What does therapy have to offer Hispanic women, especially in relation to sexuality? Unfortunately, psychotherapy could be, and in fact has been in many instances, another instrument for the oppression of all women. By helping people tolerate and adapt to established sex-roles and other structures of oppression, psychotherapy can perpetuate the status quo. On the other hand, by increasing the individual’s self-awareness and allowing a better perspective on the forces that impinge on the self, psychotherapy can become an instrument of liberation. If psychotherapy is to become an effective mode of growth for the individual rather than just another instrument of society, it can do so only by taking some risks.

Good psychotherapy for Hispanic women should free the client’s energy from the entanglement of emotional conflicts in order to enable her to make better and freer choices. Since the personal is political, these choices may entail engaging in activities which in the long run will benefit the status of women—and men—in the Hispanic community. An awareness of the reality of women’s lives and the consequent understanding that their conflicts are not exclusively intrapsychic is essential. In fact, an exclusive intrapsychic emphasis indicates a lack of understanding of the client’s reality and a lack in the therapist’s training. For good therapy to occur it is essential to help women distinguish between conflicts and suffering which have their source in socialization and oppression and conflicts arising from intrapsychic, individual sources. This distinction is not always neat and simple. But, contrary to partisans of an exclusively social perspective, each woman who comes to therapy carries her own particular internalized combination of externally determined and intrapsychic conflicts. Good therapy thus necessitates attending to both categories of factors affecting her mental health and well-being.

This form of therapy implies a political commitment to the goal of making actual changes in the life situation of Hispanic women who are in therapy, rather than simply attending to the alleviation of individual psychological symptoms. The political commitment implied in this mode of therapy, however, does not in any way detract from the therapist’s professional seriousness and psychotherapeutic expertise (Rawlins & Carter, 1977). The therapist remains, as always, a professional with a given expertise. The desired outcome of this approach to therapy is the self-empowerment of Hispanic women. But, precisely because of this perspective, therapy may be perceived as threatening by immediate members of the woman’s family, who may not be ready to cope with changes she may make as the result of the therapy When the therapy touches specifically on the issues of sexuality, an understanding of the delicate balance among all the forces described above as manifested in the life history of each individual Latin woman becomes more important than ever. Sexuality is that point where the full self-realization of a human being intersects vividly with her vulnerability. As discussed beautifully by Carole Vance (1984) in her introduction to Pleasure and Danger, where this chapter first appeared, sexuality is about pleasure and about danger.

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