Editorial

The interplay of intergenerational patterns and cultural heritage produces a narrative script that can compromise the pursuit of ambition and one's attitude toward success. The interaction between the individual, social group, economic, and political forces shapes and informs women's developmental growth. In the unconscious, our values and behavior are fueled with content related to gender, race, and class, (Sachs & Newdom, 1999), and not just the unconscious of instinctual forces. It is our social responsibility to attend to the social unconscious, another factor inhibiting the growth and development of the self. The psychoanalyst Franz Fanon (1967) states that society derives its stability from perpetuating the inferiority complex, which is society's way of perpetuating the superiority of one race, gender, or class over another.

In October 2005, the International Women's Media Foundation gave the “Courage in Journalism” award to Shahla Sherkat, editor of an Iranian women's magazine, and Sumi Khan, a Bangladesh journalist. Both of these women endured threats of imprisonment, extortion, or violent attacks for pursuing their ambition of freedom of speech in restrictive cultures. In November 2005, the Mexican Supreme Court ruled that “forced sexual relations in marriage whether physical or psychological is a crime” (Malkin & Thompson, 2005). In 1993, all states in the USA finally recognized that rape within marriage is a crime. Henrik Ibsen's play, A Doll's House, portrays the timeless theme of a woman's liberation from her internal saboteur as Nora leaves her husband and children. A common thread among these women of various cultures, Iran, Bangladesh, America, Mexico and Scandinavia is how the transmission of culture and family cultivates their inhibitions and anxieties regarding their autonomy and sense of self. The imagination and beliefs underneath the anxieties of these “sisters” have determined how they encounter their internal saboteur.

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