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Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls
By Mary Pipher, Ph.D. New York: Ballantine Books, 1994, 356 pages, $7.99
Being an adolescent girl in today’s culture can prove to be particularly challenging. Adolescent girls must deal with changes in themselves that are taking over their bodies, moods, and attitudes. They suddenly find themselves becoming bored with activities they used to enjoy and discover some of the most prized friendships slowly dwindling. They unexpectedly find themselves easily embarrassed by their parents, yet have a stronger desire than ever to please them. Amidst all of this change, adolescent women are taught conflicting lessons about life. They are taught that beauty is only skin-deep, yet the media constantly gives out the message that beauty is the key to happiness. They are taught not to be sexual, yet they are confronted with sexuality and the message to be “sexy” everywhere. They are taught to steer clear of drugs and alcohol, yet are faced with peer pressure wherever they go. Adolescent women struggle as they try to successfully navigate this perilous, sexualized, and hypocritical time period.
It is no wonder as to why so many adolescent women suddenly find themselves depressed, unhappy with their bodies, and extremely self critical. Eating disorders, drug involvement, sexual harassment, and depression suddenly become rampant among this population. Reviving Ophelia is an attempt to help others understand adolescent women, and to prove to them that they are not alone in their feelings of fear and confusion. The book is named for Ophelia, an adolescent character from Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Ophelia is Hamlet’s girlfriend who is experiencing all the problems of a typical adolescent female while simultaneously attempting desperately to become what is expected of her by her father and boyfriend, who have extremely conflicting values. Reviving Ophelia is a book created to save the selves of other conflicted adolescent females.
Reviving Ophelia is a book that is made for adolescents to relate to and to feel comforted with the knowledge that adolescents everywhere are experiencing the same roller coaster of emotions and tumultuous feelings. Mary Pipher does an excellent job encapsulating what the world is like for adolescents and attends to varying problems that adolescents must face, including chapters on theoretical and developmental issues, families, parental divorce, depression, eating disorders and body image, drugs and alcohol, sex and violence, and other significant issues. Each chapter includes case studies and real life vignettes, as well as the author’s own insightful views on the different topics.
One potential weakness of this book is the fact that it tells only success stories. In this sense, the book makes the work of psychologists and psychotherapists to look quite idealistic. It would be beneficial for the author to give some stories of her own failed attempts at psychotherapy and to comment on how that would affect both the psychotherapist and the patient. This would create a more realistic feeling for the book and be beneficial to all psychotherapists. Another weakness of this book is that it may not be well understood or needed by the male population. Because this book was written specifically for females, it may not do such an excellent job of relating to male adolescents.
This book is highly recommended for adolescent women or anyone associating with adolescent women. Parents, teachers, family members, or anyone else with a desire to understand and relate to adolescent girls would surely benefit from reading this book. Pipher notes that parents may often feel a vast loss when their daughters enter adolescence, and may even feel as failures during this time period because adolescents tend to ignore and push their parents out of the lives. This is why Reviving Ophelia is an important book to be read by parents of adolescents, as well as adolescents, themselves. The book is written on an elementary reading level, in order to touch people of all ages. It is a book age appropriate for practically all ages, from elementary school children to senior citizens. Although some issues in the book may be hard for younger children to understand fully, they are significant issues that the children will indefinitely face in their lives, and therefore it is important for them to be exposed to these issues early in life.
This book would also serve as a wonderful adjunct to psychotherapy. Not only would it make a wonderful tool for adolescent girls in psychotherapy, but it could also prove to be quite helpful in group or family therapy that involves adolescents. This book helps people to understand what is behind some of the adolescents’ behavior and thoughts. It also may help adolescent women come to have a better understanding of themselves. In psychotherapy, this book could easily generate many meaningful conversations from an adolescent girl because she may find it easier to discuss the perils of another adolescent rather than herself. It is possible that this book could open many unclosed doors and truly help adolescent women find themselves. This book is easy to read and hard to put down, intensely insightful and meaningful, and extremely effortless to relate to as an adolescent girl.