Girl Within

by Emily Hancock

Book Overview

Using the life stories of twenty women, psychologist Emily Hancock has identified a turning point in a women's life when a girl crystallizes a distinct and vital sense of self, which she then loses in... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0449905594
• ISBN13: 9780449905593
• Release Date: January 1990
• Publisher: Ballantine Books
• Length: 292 Pages
• Weight: 0.65 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.5" x 8.3"

Customer Reviews

Loved this book!

This book is amazing!!

The Girl Within

Best self help book I have ever read. Learned so much about myself from the case histories - saw parts if me in several of them. Very well written. I highly recommend it to all my friends, male as well as female, especially ones that are going through a difficult period in a relationship or have just ended one. Wish it was still in print so many more people could read it & learn!

Women rediscovering vitality

In the author's words, _The Girl Within_ is "an arrangement of female portraits" (Introduction) rather than another inner-child book. "At the buried core of women's identity is a distinct and vital self first articulated in childhood, a root identity that gets cut off in the process of growing up female. The women in my study came fully into their own and became truly themselves only when they recaptured the little girl they'd been in the first place - before she got all cluttered up." (Chapter 1)Few of the women Hancock goes on to describe have fully rejoined the girl within; some seem to have no hope whatsoever of recovering that girl's vitality. Rather than detracting from Hancock's thesis, this realism lends it authenticity. Descriptive rather than directive, _The Girl Within_ will spirit you on your journey to girlhood strength rather than force your girl within to appear by demand of prescriptions, steps or assignments.Although this book - an off-shoot of the author's doctoral work - is academic in tone, it manages thoroughness without being dry. Influences are well documented, sources are dutifully cited, and still the author is present in the work, unlike dissertations written in a distant voice. Now for the book's weaknesses, as I'm a demanding reader. The scope of _The Girl Within_ is severely limited in that the subjects available for study were socially, economically and intellectually privileged women. The author's vocabulary will further deter women of lesser means from accessing the empowering thesis presented here. Hancock's editor should be reprimanded for allowing words such as "gravid" (meaning pregnant) to appear without clarification. Use of slang such as "moxie", although limited, underlines the narrow applicability of Hancock's work. A further annoyance is the frequent use of foreign phrases when the English would do just as well, such as "rite de passage" and "sotto voce". Most readers will understand "en route", but one must be privileged indeed to understand the concept of "adulte manquée".

Women rediscovering vitality

In the author's words, _The Girl Within_ is "an arrangement of female portraits" (Introduction) rather than another inner-child book. "At the buried core of women's identity is a distinct and vital self first articulated in childhood, a root identity that gets cut off in the process of growing up female. The women in my study came fully into their own and became truly themselves only when they recaptured the little girl they'd been in the first place - before she got all cluttered up." (Chapter 1)Few of the women Hancock goes on to describe have fully rejoined the girl within; some seem to have no hope whatsoever of recovering that girl's vitality. Rather than detracting from Hancock's thesis, this realism lends it authenticity. Descriptive rather than directive, _The Girl Within_ will spirit you on your journey to girlhood strength rather than force your girl within to appear by demand of prescriptions, steps or assignments.Although this book - an off-shoot of the author's doctoral work - is academic in tone, it manages thoroughness without being dry. Influences are well documented, sources are dutifully cited, and still the author is present in the work, unlike dissertations written in a distant voice. Now for the books weaknesses, as I'm a demanding reader. The scope of _The Girl Within_ is severely limited in that the subjects available for study were socially, economically and intellectually privileged women. The author's vocabulary will further deter women of lesser means from accessing the empowering thesis presented here. Hancock's editor should be reprimanded for allowing words such as "gravid" (meaning pregnant) to appear without clarification. Use of slang such as "moxie", although limited, underlines the narrow applicability of Hancock's work. A further annoyance is the frequent use of foreign phrases when the English would do just as well, such as "rite de passage" and "sotto voce". Most readers will understand "en route", but one must be privileged indeed to understand the concept of "adulte manquée".