Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls (Ballantine Reader's Circle) [Paperback]

Mary Pipher (Author)

Book Description

Release date: February 14, 1995 | Series: Ballantine Reader's Circle

Why are more American adolescent girls prey to depression, eating disorders, addictions, and suicide attempts than ever before? According to Dr. Mary Pipher, a clinical psychologist who has treated girls for more than twenty years, we live in a look-obsessed, media-saturated, "girl-poisoning" culture. Despite the advances of feminism, escalating levels of sexism and violence--from undervalued intelligence to sexual harassment in elementary school--cause girls to stifle their creative spirit and natural impulses, which, ultimately, destroys their self-esteem. Yet girls often blame themselves or their families for this "problem with no name" instead of looking at the world around them.

Here, for the first time, are girls' unmuted voices from the front lines of adolescence, personal and painfully honest. By laying bare their harsh day-to-day reality, Reviving Ophelia issues a call to arms and offers parents compassion, strength, and strategies with which to revive these Ophelias' lost sense of self.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

At adolescence, says Mary Pipher, "girls become 'female impersonators' who fit their whole selves into small, crowded spaces." Many lose spark, interest, and even IQ points as a "girl-poisoning" society forces a choice between being shunned for staying true to oneself and struggling to stay within a narrow definition of female. Pipher's alarming tales of a generation swamped by pain may be partly informed by her role as a therapist who sees troubled children and teens, but her sketch of a tougher, more menacing world for girls often hits the mark. She offers some prescriptions for changing society and helping girls resist.

From Publishers Weekly

From her work as a psychotherapist for adolescent females, Pipher here posits and persuasively argues her thesis that today's teenaged girls are coming of age in "a girl-poisoning culture." Backed by anecdotal evidence and research findings, she suggests that, despite the advances of feminism, young women continue to be victims of abuse, self-mutilation (e.g., anorexia), consumerism and media pressure to conform to others' ideals. With sympathy and focus she cites case histories to illustrate the struggles required of adolescent girls to maintain a sense of themselves among the mixed messages they receive from society, their schools and, often, their families. Pipher offers concrete suggestions for ways by which girls can build and maintain a strong sense of self, e.g., keeping a diary, observing their social context as an anthropologist might, distinguishing between thoughts and feelings. Pipher is an eloquent advocate. Psychotherapy Book Club selection; BOMC and QPB alternates.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 304 pages
• Publisher: Ballantine Books; First edition (February 14, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0345392825
• ISBN-13: 978-0345392824
• Product Dimensions: 5.5 x 0.8 x 8.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (391 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #274,455 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Mary Pipher, Ph.D., is a clinical psychologist and author of The Shelter of Each Other: Rebuilding our Families and Another Country: Navigating the Emotional Terrain of our Elders. Awarded the American Psychological Association's Presidential Citation, Pipher speaks across the country to families, mental health professionals, and educators, and has appeared on Today, 20/20, The Charlie Rose Show, PBS Newshour with Jim Lehrer, and National Public Radio's Fresh Air.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

171 of 179 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Sadly, very insightful November 15, 1999

By Angela Moore

Format:Hardcover

I read this book two years ago, but I feel I can still add to this debate. I encourage the teenage girls who read this book and were offended by the not-so-pretty picture it paints to go back in a few years and read it again. When I was 15 and 16, I also had no doubt that I was absolutely in control of my life. I could not see the larger forces at work, influencing the way I interacted with my friends, my parents, my boyfriend and the unrealistic demands I placed on myself. When you drive yourself to be perfect, you set yourself up to fall. By the time I read Reviving Ophelia my junior year in college, I was coping with anorexia, depression, obsessive-compulsive behaviors and sexual promiscuity. Ophelia showed me how my experiences in junior high and high school had left scars on my soul that manifested themselves when I was 21. I dealt with it. Girls, examine your lives and your motives. Learn from your past. Love yourself. And to those who bemoan Pipher's lack of neat little answers: Life is not a 30-minute sitcom. There are no hard and fast answers to problems as complex as these. Awareness is the first step, and that's what Pipher was trying to do in this book, not solve a centuries-old problem in a few pages. And if you think this book was repetitious, then you weren't paying attention.

70 of 75 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Rosemary for Remembrance January 31, 2000

By yarden

Format:Paperback

A recent college graduate, I am not so far away from adolescence as I would like to think! I was motivated to read this book after writing an extensive journal entry on my standard-yet-traumatic adolescence (a time which I have worked to forget!).

I now understand my own adolescence more than I ever did before. I have come to terms with issues in my own life, as well as recognizing the phenomenal job my parents did in raising me. I have identified potential areas to watch for in my own (future) daughters. I have been instilled with the desire to positively impact adolescent girls in any way I can now -- whether that be through babysitting, teaching, or just treating them with respect when they show up at the store in which I work.

I am grateful to Pipher for her interest in this subject, and the sensitivity which she exhibited in dealing with the clients who illuminate the pages of the book. I was moved to anger for the injustices our daughters are forced to endure, and fought back tears at the lack of love that many of them experience.

I was made aware of situations that I was not previously aware of: persistent yet quiet misogyny in the classroom, the self-detachment many girls undergo in order to be socially acceptable, and the simple persistence of terrible attitudes regarding sex & sexuality in our junior highs (and I was IN junior high in the early nineties!). I was reminded of cultural situations which HAVE bothered me: lookism, sexism, physical/emotional/sexual abuse.

Mostly, I have been moved from a state of defeated, dispassionate indifference to an inferno of anger against society's "junk values".

Please, if you deal with adolescent girls, read this book. It may save their lives.

43 of 47 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars i was ophelia April 5, 2005

By allie M

Format:Paperback

despite being a bright girl who read extensively, when i was in middle school i felt dead inside like would never be happy again. i wanted to know what was wrong with me but there was no name for what i was feeling. i felt misrable, i felt ugly, i felt unworthy of anyone's attention, i felt crazy and out of control.

thankfully i could write it out. i showed some of my work to my english teacher (whose is male by the way) and he told me to read this book. finally it all made sense, me and my friends and everyone around me (church, parents, school ETC.) was buying into the feminie myth which was only perpetuated byt the intense media with junk values.

i started wotking on myself slowly. everday i would focus on a piece of me and try to accept that piece of myself. EX: one day i would focus on accepting my hair, then the next day i would focus on my eyes, then my ears, and so on. as i began to accept the outside I grew and could accept the inside. i went from a weak girl who was eager to please and trying to be perfect to a secure young woman who could express myself in "un lady like" ways. basically i gave larger society the finger and found myself.

I WAS OPHELIA! i see them everday in school even though i'm a sophmore now. This book is truth plain and simple. It should be required reading for all adolescent girls.