Psychotherapy with compulsively striving professional women 2: Clinical issues

In a previous paper I described the common characteristics of seventeen women between the ages of 22 and 42 with whom I had worked over the past few years in private psychotherapy practice, and who, I suggest, constitute a specific patient group, which I call ‘compulsively striving professional women’. I went on to explore the developmental, theoretical, cultural and systemic context of this group. In this paper I consider the challenging clinical issues raised in working with them.