Customer Reviews

Silencing The Self: Women and Depression

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It is well established from epidemiological studies that women suffer more depressive illness than men. Housebound housewives have a specially high amount of depression. Men commit suicide more often and are more ptone to alcoholism. A number of theories have been suggested to account for these facts.
Jack reviews some of the psychological theories (none of the biological ones) and presents her own theory that the depression is the result of women's indoctrination to self-effacement and low self-esteem (This is an over-simplification, and you'd have to read the book to do her ideas full justice).
She supports her thesis by a two year study of twelve depressed women. She did not have a control group. I don't see why not. It could be that she wanted to concentrate on the individuals' feelings in a non-quantitative way, but she does present a questionnaire and some statistics.
Nevertheless the interviews and case studies are well done and helpful to anyone interested in depression. Her recommended psychotherapy methods (medication is barely mentions) seem to be what is sometimes called dialectical or cognitive. Again you'd need a control group to prove treatment effectiveness.
As a self-help book for depressed patients themselves. I think it's a little too densely written. The writing is good and lucid, but someone in the throes of a severe depression would find trouble following it. Relatives of depressed women, especially husbands, might benefit more but this is not one of the depression books I would highly recommend to non-professionals. Prodessionals who work with depression and students who are interested in cognitive and dialectical approaches with (ok - now it comes) a feminist slant should find it useful and highly readable.

An opportunity for women to put the pieces of thier lives together to form a complete picture of themselves. Offers others' lives to identify with through thier experiences. Also presents an opportunity to recognize that society plays a major role in women's self-distortion. If one can make it through the first chapter, the rest is easy!

Despite the grandiose subtitle Women and Depression", this book in fact draws upon interviews with twelve women - all of whom are white and heterosexual (and all but one were married). Considering this was originally published in 1991, long after bell hooks and Adrienne Rich had exposed the racist and heterosexist bias of early feminist texts, Dana Jack's exclusionism is really not excusable!

Nevertheless, her thesis: Jack describes the root cause of depression in (her selection of) women as the loss of the self: "Women describe their depression as precipitated...by the recognition that they have lost themselves in trying to establish an intimacy that was never attained." She describes at length how women, in trying to live up to ideals of femalehood, engage in processes of self-alientation. "Despair arises," she concludes, "when a person feels hopeless about the possibility of emotional contact with others." But depression is a very complex illness with myriad root causes (inherited susceptibility, social status, family situation, childhood trauma etc.); defining it so narrowly is only really going to be helpful for selected sufferers.

Where Dana Jack is good is on elucidating the sheer activity and effort that some women put into being so compliantly passive. The twelve women are very candid about their feelings on this point and Jack gives them alot of space. However, the psychosocial origins of depressive behaviour remain opaque: Why is it that women are twice as likely as men to suffer from depression (although men are more likely to kill themselves)? Why are the numbers seemingly rising in spite of feminist advances in the last decades? How are forms of social oppression and depression in women linked? Offering more flexible and expansive answers to such questions would help us understand the root causes of such illnesses in society and would help all women (and not just the white, heterosexual ones) out of the psychological dead-end of depression.

This book was very helpful because it made me realize behaviors that led to certain feelings of shame and guilt. I recommended it for my mom and she got a lot out of it, too. I actually found more insight into myself by reading this book than going to therapy-- (not that therapy isn't good and you shouldn't go)