earticle

영어

The present paper explores the relationship between the interpersonal and developmental woman psychology and feminist theory in terms of the relational self. Feminist reclaiming of women’s selfhood, such as of women’s relational self, can be central to feminism. Yet, this claim of women’s selfhood may be, at the same time, "essential" to women to determine their characteristic traits. Thus, examining the psychological assumptions of women’s relational self, such as in Miller, Gilligan, and Chodorow’s arguments, regarding feminist theories, one cannot help going back to the essentialism/constructivism debate. I suggest that the matter of women’s self, regarding feminist relationalism, seems to be eventually concentrated on the matter of subjectivity, in light of Julia Kristeva’s notion of the self, or subject, as sujet en procès. However, regarding pastoral care and counseling for women's relational self, we needs to carefully reexamine all the psychological assumptions within the patriarchal language of relationality. Since the patriarchal percepts in Christianity support women's subordinate status in terms of women's relationality, most women may have been counseled to try to love and care others. Thus, pastoral caregivers and counselors should help women to have strategies of resistance and empowerment in their relationality.