You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
I presume that many readers of Jane Austen would not regard her Persuasion primarily from the point of view of developmental theory. It is one of the successes (and charms) of Dalsimer's book on Female Adolescence that her rendering of three familiar novels, a Shakespeare play and a diary spells out for us a sophisticated and integrated review of the psychological passage of girls from pre-puberty into adult life. Her thesis is that these literary productions not only illustrate different phases of the emotional development of girls, but throw light on the nuances of the changes through which they pass. She repeats the familiar complaint that much of the understanding of normal adolescence upon which clinicians and lay persons alike have relied rests upon formulations derived from studies of the male child and adolescent. Although actual clinical experience has contributed to an impressive body of data suggesting significant differences in the adolescent experiences of boys and girls, the professional literature on female adolescence remains rather sparse. It is likely that many of the controversies surrounding the psychology of women during the last two or three decades have been rooted in an inadequate understanding of female adolescence or even significant errors in interpreting the course of the girl's development.
Dalsimer, senior clinical psychologist at Columbia College Counselling Service and lecturer in the Department of Human Development at Columbia, has found the explication of female developmental theory by way of familiar literature a felicitous way to teach the principles of a theory important to many different disciplines. In so doing, she is following in the footsteps of one of the pioneers of the study of female psychology, Helene Deutsch. In her two volume Psychology of Women, Deutsch turns often to novels or plays to illustrate her points. And in her personal teaching, she frequently used her extensive knowledge of Russian, German, French a