Reviving Ophelia

Mary Pipher was born in 1947. She spent her youth in the 1960s and lived through times of massive societal change and upheaval. Pipher obtained a degree in clinical psychology and went on to spend the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s working with adolescent girls and their families in a therapy setting in Nebraska, United States. She also specialized in trauma and “the effects of culture on mental health” (362). Pipher continues writing and conducting focus groups to assess the current mindset of adolescent girls. Pipher worked with girls from every walk of life and possible circumstance and did her best to provide them with a source of empathy and the guidance they needed to overcome the obstacles they faced in their adolescence. In the 1990s, Pipher was alarmed at the rates of divorce, delinquency, teenage rebellion, and sexual violence. It inspired her to write Reviving Ophelia to shed light on the problems teenage girls were facing at the time and to help those who could not access therapy or other support.

Pipher’s combination of knowledge of adolescence, culture, and trauma served as the baseline for the book, and her experiences directly worked to demonstrate the arguments she was making against Western culture’s treatment and attitude toward girls.