Mary Pipher | |
|---|---|
| Born | October 21, 1947 |
| Other names | Mary Bray Pipher |
| Alma mater | University of California, Berkeley (BA) University of Nebraska–Lincoln (PhD) |
| Occupation(s) | Psychologist and author |
| Known for | Reviving Ophelia |
Mary Elizabeth Pipher (born October 21, 1947), also known as Mary Bray Pipher, is an American clinical psychologist and author. Her books include A Life in Light: Meditations on Impermanence (2022) [1] and Women Rowing North (2019), a book on aging gracefully. [2] [3] Prior to that, she wrote The Green Boat: Reviving Ourselves in Our Capsized Culture (2013) and the bestseller Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls (1994).
Pipher received a Bachelor of Arts degree in anthropology from the University of California, Berkeley in 1969 and a PhD in clinical psychology from the University of Nebraska–Lincoln in 1977. She was a Rockefeller Scholar in Residence at Bellagio in 2001. She received two American Psychological Association Presidential Citations. She returned the one she received in 2006 as a protest against the APA's acknowledgment that some of its members participate in controversial interrogation techniques at Guantánamo Bay and at US "black sites". [4]
Pipher participates actively in Nebraska state legislature and voices her opinion through letters to the editor of the Lincoln Journal Star . She wrote an essay for The New York Times about the difficulty of Nebraska's mixed political views and need for more progressive politicians. She strongly opposes the Keystone XL Pipeline [5] and supported the Nebraska Legislative Bill 802, the purpose of which was to create a state task force to combat climate change, calling it "an opportunity to educate and work through problems relating to climate change." [6]
As of 2019 [update] she resides in Lincoln, Nebraska. [7]
Pipher is best known for a book she wrote in 1994, introducing the terms Ophelia complex or Ophelia syndrome, in Reviving Ophelia . There she argued for a view of Shakespeare's character of Ophelia in Hamlet as lacking inner direction and externally defined by men, [8] and suggested that similar external pressures were currently faced by post-pubescent girls. [9] The danger of the Ophelia syndrome was that of abandoning a rooted childhood self, for an apparently more sophisticated but over-externalized façade self. [10]
Reviving Ophelia 25th Anniversary Edition: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls is a revised and updated book co-written with Dr. Pipher's daughter, Sara Gilliam.
