Reviving Ophelia

Pipher has so far spent over three decades working in therapy with adolescent girls. Chapter 14 summarizes what she has learned from her experiences in therapy and what she has discovered to be the most viable approaches to helping adolescent girls in this context. She reiterates the importance of listening and empathy when trying to help others with their problems, maintaining a positive attitude, and focusing on solutions. Her goal with every client she sees is to “increase their authenticity, openness to experience, competence, flexible thinking, and realistic appraisals of the environment” (288). Like the Jungian ideals that inspired her, she wants to assist girls with rebuilding their sense of self and living as who they want to be rather than what society tells them to be. She restates the importance of family, noting that psychology of the 1960s and 1970s still adopted a somewhat negative view of dependence and closeness in Western culture, holding the Freudian belief that family was the cause of most, if not all, pathology (mental illness).

Pipher alludes to the North Star, comparing the inner voice of an adolescent girl to a guiding star that she must follow despite all other forces speaking against it.