Phyllis Chesler

Phyllis Chesler (born October 1, 1940) is an American psychotherapist, professor emerita of psychology and women's studies at the City University of New York, and author of twenty books whose work has shaped feminist psychology through critiques of psychiatric practices toward women and examinations of intra-female dynamics, while later addressing anti-Semitism within leftist and feminist circles, honor killings, and systematic gender oppression in Muslim-majority societies. Her seminal 1972 book Women and Madness, which has sold over three million copies and been cited thousands of times in academic literature, exposed how mental health institutions pathologized normal female behaviors and emotions under patriarchal norms, drawing on empirical observations from her clinical experience and institutional analyses.

A co-founder of the Association for Women in Psychology in 1969 and the National Women's Health Network in 1975, Chesler emerged as a second-wave feminist leader who prioritized women's legal, medical, and psychological autonomy, including pioneering research on rape, incest, custody battles, and gender biases in courts and therapy. She earned a PhD in psychology from the New School for Social Research in 1969 after studying at Bard College, and her early activism extended to global campaigns for human rights, including affidavits supporting asylum claims by women facing honor-based violence from their families. Following the September 11 attacks, her focus shifted to causal factors in terrorism, forced veiling, polygamy, and tribal honor systems, authoring studies on honor killings published in the Middle East Quarterly and co-leading efforts to rescue hundreds of Afghan women amid Taliban resurgence in 2021–2022.

Chesler's later works, such as The New Anti-Semitism (2003) and Islamic Gender Apartheid (2017), have drawn controversy for challenging multicultural relativism and highlighting alliances between radical feminism and Islamist ideologies that she argues undermine universal women's rights and enable Jew-hatred disguised as anti-Zionism; these positions, rooted in her Zionist commitments and involvement with groups like the original Women of the Wall, position her as a dissident voice against prevailing academic and media narratives on these topics. Her writings, translated into multiple languages and featured in peer-reviewed journals, continue to influence debates on female solidarity, prison reform for women, and protections for dissidents in non-Western contexts, often prioritizing empirical patterns over ideological conformity.