Reviving Ophelia

Mary Pipher

Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 1994

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Summary

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapters 6-8

Chapters 9-10

Chapters 11-12

Chapter 13

Chapters 14-16

Key Figures

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Chapters 14-16Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 14 Summary: “What I’ve Learned from Listening”

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. She provides a list of questions, such as “What kinds of people do I respect?” and “How would I describe myself to myself?” (293), that girls can ask themselves to discover who they are, what they want, what they like/dislike, and what their place is in an ever-changing world. She encourages the use of a journal to write down thoughts and process emotions. Pipher notes that teaching girls how to build healthy relationships, center themselves in times of emotional crisis, and set boundaries are skills that she tries to share with all her clients. She explains that with the advent of social media and the internet, girls need their North Stars now more than ever; they are faced with more messages and conflicting information than ever before.

Chapter 15 Summary: “Let a Thousand Flowers Bloom”

June is a client who came to Pipher at age 27 for help with dating for the first time. Pipher compares June’s spirit to a spiderweb, “delicate and strong” (302). Through her own resilience and strong sense of self, June made it through a childhood with a neglectful father and no friends to find happiness in work and adult friendships later on in her life. Through the adversity she experienced, she became stronger. Her social isolation allowed her to fully develop herself, free from the constraints of gender roles or social norms. Pipher explains that June was like a desert flower, waiting dormant for the rain. Strength is defined differently by different people, but Pipher believes it can be defined as following and accepting the self. The anecdotes of Caroline and Maria, who also fought their way through adversity, illustrate the “stories of three fighters” (310) and Pipher notes that most girls eventually overcome the struggles of adolescence, unlike Ophelia, the book’s namesake. The hurricane of adolescence that girls must weather is fraught with challenges, but girls are resilient. Pipher is also proud to report that activism among teenage girls is the highest since the 1960s, with girls advocating for causes like gun violence, climate change, gender and sexuality, and poverty. She shares the story of Ina, who 17 created two school-based girl empowerment programs, which took off and expanded. The programs are fully student-run.

Chapter 16 Summary: “A Fence at the Top of the Hill”

Pipher begins the final chapter of Reviving Ophelia with a personal anecdote of her time with her daughter Sara learning self-defense. She stresses the importance of learning to fight back but also states that teaching boys to be gentle and sensitive is equally if not more important. She relays a story a friend of hers told her in which a group of teenagers were asked which living creature they would like to be. The boys all chose brave and tough animals, and one girl spoke out that she would choose to be a rose. Pipher expresses her grief at this memory, explaining that “roses can’t even move, and, while beautiful, they don’t experience anything” (322). Experiences and relationships are essential to the healthy development of girls, but they need to be psychologically and physical safe. Girls need to be taught healthy habits for coping with stress and ways of resisting pressure. They also need to feel like they are connected to the world and making it better.

Parents need to be open to new ideas and empathize with their daughters’ experiences while not taking the temporary rejection of adolescence personally. Parents must also model behavior that reflects equality and respect and encourage pleasure in healthy hobbies and interests. Reminding adolescent girls that the future is brighter and that the chaos of youth will end is also helpful. Pipher emphasizes the importance of inclusive and stringent school policies and the promotion of activities and groups that allow adolescent boys and girls to interact outside a sexual or otherwise intimidating environment, so they may gain positive and platonic experiences of the opposite sex. Pipher refers to a favorite poem of her grandfather’s in which a town deliberates whether to put an ambulance at the bottom of a dangerous cliff or a fence at the top. She makes the comparison of prevention and treatment to her work in therapy, stating that, after decades in the field, she is now fully aware that prevention, in other words cultural change, is the most important factor in improving the lives of girls.

Chapters 14-16 Analysis

Just like with her form of writing about her clients, Pipher explains that when she meets them for the first time, she “search[es] for things about them that [she] could respect and ways in which [she] could empathize with their situations. Unless [she] found these things, it was impossible to help” (288). This is the overarching lesson that Pipher is imparting from her years of therapy with teenage girls: the importance of listening and understanding things from their perspective. While she is always encouraging girls to open up and share the details of their stories, she encourages optimism and positivity and writes this way for her readers as well. Pipher uses nature metaphors throughout the book and promotes exploring nature to her clients as well. In her focus group, she told the girls about her idea of the North Star, inspiring them to follow their own path and not the path they are pressured to follow. A reduction in social media use and a return to nature and face-to-face relationships are changes that Pipher believes will greatly improve the mental health of adolescent girls.

The final chapter in Reviving Ophelia offers up a plethora of solutions and ideas for parents, adolescents, psychologists, and anyone else who is interested in bettering the lives of teenage girls. Pipher summarizes the issues addressed throughout the book while listing ways these problems can be mended, lessened, or even eliminated. She explains that working with youth for three decades taught her that, while therapy is helpful and necessary in many circumstances, it would be far more beneficial to prevent the damage from being done via cultural change or the “fence at the top of the hill” (330). This final call for change does not negate the help she provided girls in therapy; rather, it implies that therapy is a solution to a problem that should not exist to begin with.