'Reviving Ophelia: Saving The Selves Of Adolescent Girls' was published in 1994.

And she became convinced that there was something about the changing American culture that was creating a crisis for girls, so she wrote a book about it. As a psychologist, Pipher met with patients and did more research, and she concluded that teenage girls had been overlooked by the field of psychology. More and more of her patients were teenage girls, and they were coming to her with serious issues - eating disorders or the desire to self-harm, alcohol and drug use, harmful sexual experiences, intense conflict with parents - and their parents had no idea how to help. Mary Pipher, Ph.D., is a psychologist and the author of nine books, including the New York Times bestsellers Reviving Ophelia, The Shelter of Each Other, and Another Country, as well as Seeking Peace and Writing to Change the World. She lives in Nebraska.In the early 1990s, therapist Mary Pipher noticed a disturbing trend. Told in the brave, fearless, and honest voices of the girls themselves who are emerging from the chaos of adolescence, Reviving Ophelia is a call to arms, offering important tactics, empathy, and strength, and urging a change where young hearts can flourish again, and rediscover and reengage their sense of self. They were losing their resiliency and optimism in a “girl-poisoning” culture that propagated values at odds with those necessary to survive. Crashing and burning in a “developmental Bermuda Triangle,” they were coming of age in a media-saturated culture preoccupied with unrealistic ideals of beauty and images of dehumanized sex, a culture rife with addictions and sexually transmitted diseases. Why were so many of them turning to therapy in the first place? Why had these lovely and promising human beings fallen prey to depression, eating disorders, suicide attempts, and crushingly low self-esteem? The answer hit a nerve with Pipher, with parents, and with the girls themselves.

The groundbreaking work that poses one of the most provocative questions of a generation: what is happening to the selves of adolescent girls?Īs a therapist, Mary Pipher was becoming frustrated with the growing problems among adolescent girls. Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls

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