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Women's depression, the self, feminism, and theories of patriarchal domination are the entangled themes running through Silencing the Self. Drawing from feminist forerunners, who emphasize that traditional theories have evolved solely from male
experience and conceptualizations, Dana Crowley Jack has attempted to unpack the nosology of depression by linking the norms of health - autonomy, instrumentality and separateness - to men, and the diagnostic descriptions of depression - passivity and dependence - to women. A woman either complies with these socially derived gender norms and becomes depressed, or fails to comply and becomes alienated (and depressed). In either case the lack of healthy, egalitarian attachments results in a muted self which is socially determined and socially maintained. Thus, the culture which pejoratively defines differences as deviance is the culture responsible both for silencing the self and for the high incidence of depression in women - quoted by reputable epidemiological studies to be twice that of men.
Jack argues that the recognition of women's subordinate social context is indispensable for any understanding of their experience, hence also for accurate theorizing or effective therapy. Subordinate status, she proposes, ‘fundamentally affects the language and concepts women employ in thinking and talking about themselves’ (p. 27). Quoting Gilligan (Brown and Gilligan 1990), that men and women both use the same language but convey different meanings, Jack contends that women mirror their ethos through the use of negatively valued words - e.g., dependent, passive, insecure, immature - to reveal a subjective reality that has no other names. These negatives, Jack maintains, reveal the secret and moral imperatives of woman's double bind - to be good she must be dependent; to desire relationship, however, she is bad or sick.
That gender bias permeates the social sciences and has distorted theories of women is an unfortunate and well-document