Anna Fels - Necessary Dreams: Ambition in Womens Changing Lives

A brilliant, clear-eyed, and wonderfully readable discussion of the role of ambition in womens liveschock-full of valuable information and insightsa book that is not to be missed.

Maggie Scarf, author of Intimate Partners:
Patterns in Love and Marriage

For men, reveling in praise is as natural as breathing, and the confidence that approval produces becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, leading to further triumphs. Women, however, too often stuff their badges away in a drawer and, in doing so, sabotage the support that would spur them to achieve more success. Thus they cheat themselves in yet one more economy: the marketplace of accolades. Fels deserves credit for illuminating this dance of denial.

BusinessWeek

Remarkable reframes the struggle for equality in a powerful way.

Salon

Fresh and original and has the qualities of a novel. As I read it, I recognized myself and many other women in its pages. This book is not only important but true.

Jamaica Kincaid, author of My Brother

Necessary Dreams makes a provocative case for female ambition. It works as a feminist treatise, a study of human motivation and a how-to manual for revamping the too-often demoralizing American workplace.

Austin American-Statesman

Certain to trigger debate. Timely, well-researched practical and useful.

Tucson Citizen

This thoughtful and thought-provoking book will help talented women everywhere cross the last frontierthe mental barrier that prevents them from admitting their full ambition and embracing their success openly. Perhaps then it will be possible to build the right support systems for work and family, instead of expecting women to shoulder the burdens alone.

Rosabeth Moss Kanter, author of
Men and Women of the Corporation

What distinguishes Felss book from other feminist laments is the case it makes for ambition as a basic human impulse. Fels has done her research.

The Washington Post Book World

How wonderful to discover a book that is so important, so original, and so beautifully composed. Felss judgment is measured, but the cumulative effect is devastating. Necessary Dreams is a moving meditation on contemporary women and the obstacles they face.

Peter D. Kramer, author of Listening to Prozac

Career womenor anyone raising smart daughters to do big thingswill find a lot within [this books] pages to think about and discuss.

Publishers Weekly

Fels shows that women, like men, have a drive to excel, and that for women, as for men, happiness is connected to achieving recognition for real accomplishments. Her suggestions are therapeutic gold, at once creative and realistic. Accessible, clear, conversational, this could just be the book that lets working women stop feeling guilty.

Katha Pollitt, author of Antarctic Traveller

There is more good sense about womens lives in Anna Felss book than in anything Ive ever read.

Phyllis Rose, author of Parallel Lives

Anna Fels is a practicing psychiatrist who has written for The New York Times Book Review, The Times Literary Supplement, The Harvard Business Review, The Nation, Self, and, most recently, the Science Times section of The New York Times. A member of the faculty of the Weill Medical College of Cornell University at New York Presbyterian Hospital, Fels lives with her husband and two children in New York City.

FIRST ANCHOR BOOKS EDITION, FEBRUARY 2005

Copyright 2004 by Anna Fels

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Anchor Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published in hardcover in the United States by Pantheon Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, in 2004.

Anchor Books and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Owing to space limitations, permissions will be found following the index.

The Library of Congress has cataloged the Pantheon edition as follows:
Fels, Anna.
Necessary dreams : the vital role of ambition in womens changing lives / Anna Fels.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
1. WomenPsychology. 2. Women in the professions. 3. Working mothers.
4. Ambition. 5. Sex role. I. Title.
HQ1206.F35 2004
305.4dc22
2003062422

eISBN: 978-0-307-83413-3

Author photograph Sigrid Estrada

www.anchorbooks.com

v3.1

FOR
JIM, MOLLY, AND WILL

What happens when Oliviathis organism that has been under the shadow of the rock this million yearsfeels the light fall on it, sees coming her way a piece of strange foodknowledge, adventure, art. And she reaches out for it and has to devise some entirely new combination of her resources, so highly developed for other purposes, so as to absorb the new into the old.

VIRGINIA WOOLF , A Room of Ones Own

I realized, as I began to write these acknowledgments, that this project actually started many years ago, but then lay dormant for decades. As an undergraduate, I worked with Matina Horner, one of the earliest and most influential researchers in the area of women and achievement. Her research posed questions that I and many other women in the following decades, endlessly revisited and struggled with throughout our lives and that ultimately led to the writing of this book.

Many years later an informal discussion of these issues with Linda Healey, then an editor at Pantheon, led her to suggest that I write a book on the subject. Her confidence that I could successfully produce a book on the daunting subject of women and ambition launched this project. Sarah Chalfant, my agent, shepherded the book through its initial stages and also was a discerning and enthusiastic reader. My editor, Shelley Wanger, patiently followed the book through its many incarnations, helping me to shape it and carefully guiding it though the complex process of publication. Sydney Johnson tracked down the diverse and sometimes obscure references that inform this work.

While writing the manuscript, I have had the advice as well as the insights of many friends. A study group of my colleagues, Dr. Leonard Groopman, Dr. Richard Friedman, Dr. Minna Fyer, Dr. Alan Barasch, and Dr. Scott Goldsmith, generously critiqued some of the hypotheses that I formulated in the books early stages. My writing group, including Wendy Gimbel and Mac Griswold, lent me their support and guidance. Susan Grace Galassi, also a member of this group, has done more than I can ever repay by her encouragement throughout the writing process, keeping up my morale during the most difficult moments.

Exploratory conversations with several distinguished women including Eve Ensler, Nancy Evans, and Leslie Stahl, raised important issues that I have tried to address. Friends who provided the lively discussions and continued support without which this book could not have been completed include Cynthia Farrar, Jonathan Galassi, Dr. Edward Hallowell, Dr. Judith Tanenbaum, and Randolyn Zinn. Barbara Strauch at