eBook

Revising herself : the story of women's identity from college to midlife

Josselson, Ruthellen

1998

Overview

In 1972, Ruthellen Josselson was a young psychologist fascinated by the riddle of how a woman creates an identity and chooses one path over another in life--particularly in the face of the nascent feminist movement. Selecting at random thirty young women in their last year of college, Josselson undertook a ground-breaking study that would follow these women's personal odysseys over the next twenty-two years, from graduation to midlife. What she learned about the ways women reinvent themselves in an ever-changing world is the subject of Revising Herself, a myth-shattering look at both a unique generation of American women on the front lines of wrenching social change, and at the conflicts and compromises facing women today. With stunning candor and hard-won insight, the \"ordinary\" (and anonymous) women in Josselson's study reveal how much more complex and interesting real women's lives are than the one-dimensional stereotypes often portrayed in the media. Allowing women to define themselves in their own terms, Revising Herself holds up a provocative mirror in which readers can reflect upon their own life choices, recognize themselves in these women's experiences, and gain new insight into how we construct our own identities over a lifetime.

• Publisher: Oxford University Press,Oxford University Press, Incorporated
• Subject: Identity / Identity (Psychology) / Identity (Psychology) -- United States -- Longitudinal studies / Longitudinal studies / Psychology / United States / Women / Women -- United States -- Identity -- Longitudinal studies / Women -- United States -- Psychology -- Longitudinal studies
• ISBN: 9780195121155, 0195121155