Yes, feminist psychologists exist, but we have yet to find them

After the pandemic, the taboo on the issue of mental health is gradually being lifted. Indeed, more and more of us are becoming aware of the importance of consulting a professional when the need arises. However, finding the right shoe can sometimes be a real challenge. Mathilde*, a 26-year-old translator, knows a thing or two about this:

“A few months ago I started looking for a psychologist. I had a hard time finding someone I would feel comfortable talking to about my sexual orientation. Fortunately, I have never had a bad experience with psychologists who are homophobic or hostile to these questions, but on the other hand I have dealt with embarrassing therapists on these topics, who either want to encourage me to talk, or vice versa, made it a “non-subject ”, thus invalidating my experiences. Fortunately, with a little patience and a dozen psychologists, I was able to find someone who would listen to me and above all validate my experiences and my feelings. »

Feminist psychologists, a specimen still too rare (in France)

Unfortunately, Mathilde’s case is far from isolated. Very regularly, Yasmin Moreno, clinical psychologist who practices integrative feminist psychotherapy, sees people, often young people, arriving in his studio in the urgency of finally finding someone who can offer them a space in which they feel heard and, above all, safe. She says to to miss :

” I see many patients who have seen psychologists before me and who stopped their therapy after a session because they didn’t feel safe to talk about what was troubling them.. They can be people from the LGBTQIA+ community who have felt judged or people who have been victims of violence and have not found someone who can offer them a space where they feel safe to talk about it. »

If Yasmin Moreno has no problem declaring herself a feminist – in the intersectional sense of the term – in order to be easily identified on the internet, this is not the case for all psychologists. According to the professional, this tendency not to want to be identified as such is mainly linked to the French feminist taboo :

” There are many more psychologists who claim to be feminists in Spain, for example., my home country, than here in France. Here one gets the impression that feminism is a dirty word. Most importantly, the word should not be used, at the risk of giving the analysis a negative spin. As if being a feminist meant being biased, when in the end it’s quite the opposite. By practicing the discipline in such a way as to take into account gender issues, we are precisely less prejudiced, we take into account the social oppressions that play a fundamental role in the mental health of women and of all minorities in general. »

Feminist psychology, a new “wake-up culture” fad?

But then, why is the word feminist a dirty word in the eyes of psychology? According to the specialist, feminism tends to be viewed as a belief, not a scientific field of study in its own rightand this is a big part of the problem:

“Being a feminist is not a belief. It’s a field of study [appartenant aux sciences sociales, ndlr]. There are feminist theories that have been around for a century, i.e. since the very beginning of theorizing psychoanalysis and psychology. Psychologists have been writing about psychology with a gender-focused approach for decades. As early as 1922, Karen Horney [grande psychiatre d’origine allemande, cofondatrice en 1920 de l’Institut psychanalytique de Berlin, ndlr] she opposed the notion of penis envy, but obviously remained on the sidelines, in an era where men were considered the norm and women the pathology. »

Lack of training available to professionals

Also on the training front, there is a need to make progress on the subject. Because, if Yasmin Moreno was able to benefit from specific lessons on gender in psychology, it is not only because she spontaneously decided to take an interest in this approach, but also because she carried out her university career in Spain, a country at the forefront when it comes to psychology and gender :

“The training offer is more developed in Spain than in France. But despite having studied in Spain, I quickly became aware of the lack of consideration of the gender issue in psychology in the classical curriculum in general. The subject was quickly tackled over the course of a semester in an optional module, the teaching of which was only delivered remotely. »

In the face of this lack of consideration, it is therefore not surprising to note that psychologists familiar with issues of gender and sexuality are not running on the streets. However, the need is there: not only because patients ask for it, but also because certain psychological disorders are inseparable from the social oppression suffered by minorities. Think in particular of eating disorders, a disorder still widely treated on an individual basis even if they mainly affect women.

*Name has been changed