Valory Mitchell

• Professor Emeritus at Alliant International University

Purpose in life is an orientation associated with energy, effectiveness, and optimism. A general trend is for purpose to decline in the later years, with unclear implications for positive aging. This article, however, takes a new approach to exploring the role of purpose. Using data from the Mills Study, a 55-year study of women’s adult development...

A central tenet of feminist therapy is that it is necessary to see and understand women in context. All people live their lives within a developmental context; but, curiously, this powerful aspect of their context is often overlooked. This brief article draws explanatory concepts from five major developmental theoriesthose of Erikson, Gilligan, Jun...

The repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell offered legal equality to sexual minorities in the military. However, this big step forward had no impact on the policy of exclusion and rejection and the fear and secrecy that resulted for transgender people (whether lesbian, gay, bisexual, or heterosexual). In this article, we argue that transgender citizens sh...

This study compares 2 cohorts of female-to-male (FtM) transsexuals, one who transitioned between 1969 and 1987 and the other, between 2000 and 2006. Eight individuals from each group were interviewed. Results revealed that FtMs transitioning since 2000 less often seek bottom surgery, use a greater variety of terms to label their gender identity, an...

Aging for women within a patriarchal and youth-based culture has always been fraught with oppression; the experience is even more complicated in the 21st century. Over the past 30 years, feminist therapy has begun to address the phenomenological experience of women as they age and the specific needs of women over age 50. This article extends the wo...

Die Beiträge dieses Bandes gehen der ethischen und gesellschaftlichen Vertretbarkeit einer Form der familialen Lebensgestaltung nach, die an fundamentale Überzeugungen, kulturelle Werthaltungen, gesellschaftliche Leitbilder und rechtliche Regelungen rührt: der gleichgeschlechtlichen Familie. Da sich die Forschung in Deutschland bisher kaum mit diff...

This article describes supervision for students working with lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender clients. The goal of supervision is to assist the student-therapist in developing and maintaining a therapeutic self. To establish a therapeutic self is to become a person who has access within himself or herself to a set of personal capacities that...

Although academic and clinical psychology do not often embrace, lifespan developmental constructs and theories can enrich the process of psychotherapy. Particularly in the last third of life, when social institutions and societal expectations provide less guidance and constraint, access to understandings about the lifespan may be especially useful....

Based on in-depth interviews, this article proposes a six-stage model of identity development for gay men who are becoming parents. The six stages include (1) a coming out experience that assumes being gay means not parenting; (2) increased self-awareness and confidence as a gay man; (3) recognition of the strength of newly constructed gay families...

Foreword 1. Lesbian Family Life, Like the Fingers of a Hand: Under-Discussed and Controversial Topics Valory Mitchell 2. More than Surface Tension: Femmes in Families Arlene Istar Lev 3. Infidelity: Outlaws and In-Laws and Lesbian Relationships Beverly Burch 4. Just Molly and Me, and Donor Makes Three: Lesbian Motherhood in the Age of Assisted Repr...

This conceptual/theoretical article uses the psychodynamic Self Psychology model for the development of a vital, harmonious, and cohesive self to describe and understand the psychological importance of family for lesbian women. How can a healthy lesbian self be developed, nurtured, and maintained in an oppressive sexist and homophobic world? Family...

When gay and lesbian couples decide to become parents, they are unique as a group in always requiring the involvement of a facilitating other: a donor, surrogate, or (in the case of adopted or foster children) birth parents. This clinical paper explores common psychological and social challenges gay and lesbian couples face when using alternative r...

The hypothesis is advanced that the early 50s is women's prime of life, an androgynous time of good health combined with autonomy and relational security. In a sample of 700 college alumnae, aged 26–80, who were studied in 1983, women in their early 50s most often described their lives as “first-rate.” In a longitudinal sample from the same institu...

This paper argues for the value of an adult developmental perspective in work with lesbian couples. Focusing on midlife, case examples illustrate issues and situations that create strength and satisfaction, as well as those that create stress and disappointment. Key themes include expansiveness and generativity, differentiation, awareness of past a...

Findings are presented from a thematic content analysis of individual and group interviews in which 26 lesbian mothers were asked about their concerns, values, and hopes regarding their children’s sex education; about what they have done and plan to do with regard to sex education; and about how they evaluate their efforts to date. Themes, linked t...

The relationship between childhood sexual abuse, dissociation, and bulimia in a sample of 65 bulimic women was investigated. It was hypothesized that the binge-purge cycle is used dissociatively in response to painful affects. The sample was divided into two groups, based on history of sexual abuse, and compared on demographics, and on level of dis...

In this article, a study is reported in which lesbian mothers describe their parental roles and family structures. These findings support a feminist critique of key tenets of child development theories and family models, and reveal the sexism (and heterosexism) of these assumptions. Examples from clinical work show how this critique can inform ther...

This paper attempts, first, to extend a conceptualization of basic forms of social interaction and psychological orientation with concepts from object relations theory. Next, a coding scheme is presented for describing object relations in short stories. Then, we show how twenty stories with different patterns of social interaction and psychological...

We examine the lives and growth processes of women who have achieved considerable development of personality. Subjects of study are seven women in a longitudinal sample who, at ages 42-45, are classified by the Loevinger Sentence Completion Test at the highest ego-levels. As a way of describing their lives, all seven are analyzed in terms of Levins...

Illustrated how the concepts of "social clock project" and "pattern" may be applied by examining the results of a questionnaire administered at college graduation; scores from the California Psychological Inventory administered in college, 5 yrs after graduation, and 21–23 yrs after graduation; and questionnaires administered during the 2 follow-up...

As we look back on the student generation of the 1960s we see that the university environment was characterized by unprecedented unrest. Many young people were developing their own values and lifestyles in a milieu marked by conflict between the value system they perceived in their families and those of significant others outside the family context...

Discusses how couple therapists can help same-sex partners (1) deal with homophobia, (2) make their couple commitments and relationship roles less ambiguous, and (3) build a more closely knit network of social support. For each of these issues, the authors describe problem-specific dynamics and related therapeutic techniques. The authors then discu...

believe that the planned 2-mother family is a "living laboratory" that embodies feminist critiques of family functioning and gendered parenting / make those critiques explicit by examining some areas in which we have been taught that a 2-gender parenting pair is a requisite for the health of the family and its members / operating from a lesbian-cen...