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Freud once confided to Marie Bonaparte that an enigma which baffled him was: “What does a woman want” (Jones, 1955, p. 421). According to Ilene J. Philipson, in increasing numbers, women want to be psychotherapists. Focusing on the profession of clinical psychology, Philipson informs us at the start of her book that, in 1976, 31.1% of all recipients of Ph.D.'s in this field were women, but by 1990, they made up over 58%. She sees this trend as markedly in contrast with the fact that, since the mid-1980s, men's receipt of doctorates in clinical psychology has decreased by an average of almost 2% annually. Furthermore, Philipson sees the significant increase in the percentage of women in clinical psychology as a mixed blessing for women; she argues that psychotherapy as an occupation is becoming “feminized”:
Due both to greater numbers of women and fewer numbers of men entering psychotherapy training programs, clinical practice is moving toward becoming a professional world without men. Conventional wisdom gleaned from other fields that have feminized indicates that when men abandon an occupational category, the field becomes less remunerative and lower in status. (p. 4)