Book Review: Reviving Ophelia by Mary Pipher, Ph.D

Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls is the kind of book that I want to read because I know that I need to understand what it purports. And it's the kind of book that I don't want to read because I already know a little bit about what it purports and, if I'm honest with myself, I really don't want to know more.

While Reviving Ophelia is an older book (first published in 1994), I've found that it hasn't reached the level of familiarity or saturation that it deserves - in asking others, most had not heard of the book, and only one had read it. I hope my review here will generate a little bit more of that familiarity, because even though I don't always like reading the hard truths it contains, I agree with Dr. Pipher that everyone needs to be aware of them.

The book takes on the difficult subject of understanding two sides of adolescent girls: first, the side that is their true identity, that wonder and amazement at life that so many younger girls embody. And second, the hardened, nervous, insecure side that is consumed with pleasing others and conforming utterly that it seems like every young girl goes through. While it's important enough to recognize the difficulties of the latter, it is even more important to realize how much impact that side of adolescence has on a girl's life.

Dr. Pipher, a practicing Psychiatrist and counselor, draws on years of experience in counseling teen-aged girls to unfold for readers a simultaneously breathtaking and heartbreaking look at how adolescence, and the adolescent culture that accompanies it, pose a threat to the very identity of young girls.

(An aside: Dr. Pipher suggests, and I am convinced, that similar threats exist for young boys, but she disclaims that she writes about girls because she knows girls. A similar book: Raising Cain by Dan Kindlon and Michael Thompson focuses on many of the same issues as Pipher's excellent book, but with adolescent boys in view.)

Her examination is comprehensive. She gives a clear overview of her foundational ideas about identity in girls and why it is so important. She looks at family life, mothers, fathers, and divorce. She considers depression, the "god of thinness", drugs, alcohol, sex, and violence. She compares the world that she grew up in to the world of the mid-90's (a 30-year gap).

Through all of this, Pipher exposes hard truths about the realities girls face. She tells the stories of many girls, each in the context that she best illustrates, and then unpacks the pathology of that girl's circumstances to demonstrate what went wrong. And she draws on the ideas of many, humbly integrating the thoughts and discoveries of other counselors and thinkers to help her in her discovery of the problems of adolescence in girls.

Thankfully, Dr. Pipher's efforts are not focused only on exposing the problems. As the title implies, she goes to great lengths to help the reader understand how to protect, strengthen, encourage, and aid young girls in their journeys through adolescence. She gives many practical suggestions, acknowledges the parts that are difficult to address, and presents a comprehensive set of solutions to these hard problems. Through all of this, Pipher offers great hope in a subject that would otherwise be very bleak indeed.

Dr. Pipher appears to aim her book at parents and counselors, and it would prove a valuable resource for both. But its value extends beyond this limited audience: I think teachers, pastors, youth pastors - and anyone else who has regular contact with the adolescent generation - can, and should, benefit from reading Reviving Ophelia.

Readers may also appreciate Ophelia Speaks by Sara Shandler, in which a college student writes about adolescent girls' search for their own identities; and Surviving Ophelia by Cheryl Dellasega, which focuses on how mothers deal with these tumultuous years.