Mary pipher biography

A clinical psychologist in private practice in Lincoln, Nebraska, Mary Pipher has been seeing adolescent girls and families for some 25 years. She received her BA in Cultural Anthropology from the University of California at Berkeley in and her Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from the University of Nebraska in Dr. Pipher's work combines her training in both the fields of psychology and anthropology. Her special area of interest is how American culture affects the mental health of American women.

Dr. Pipher is the author of Seeking Peace: Chronicles of the Worst Buddhist in the World; The Shelter of Each Other: Rebuilding Our Families; Writing to Change the World; Letters to a Young Therapist (Art of Mentoring); The Middle of Everywhere: Helping Refugees Enter the American Community; Another Country: Navigating the Emotional Terrain of Our Elders; Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls; and Hunger Pains: The Modern Woman’s Tragic Quest for Thinness.

Dr. Pipher’s Reviving Ophelia, first published in , broke new ground in helping parents understand the pressures teenage girls face in this culture. It struck a responsive chord and hit the number one spot on the New York Times bestseller list the next year, largely by word of mouth from one parent to another.

The recipient of several awards and honors, Dr. Pipher was awarded the distinguished Presidential Award from the American Psychological Association in Her short fiction has won numerous awards including the Alice P. Carter Award and recognition in the National Feminist Writer's competition.

A commentator for Nebraska Public Radio, a popular speaker and workshop leader, Dr. Pipher has a unique way of reaching her audiences. Her articulate and energetic delivery creates enthusiasm for her ideas in a way that unites rather than polarizes her audiences. She has appeared on The Today Show and National Public Radio's "Fresh Air."

She Looks to the Skies

Mary Pipher follows a ritual every time she comes to Spring Creek Prairie Audubon Center: she finds a place among its tallgrass prairie, lies down, and looks to the heavens. “That experience is like medicine to me.”

Step back 25 years, and Mary and her husband, Jim, lived in a house with a small yard. This was no home with a view. No sunrises or sunsets, or even moon rises. On their first visit to Spring Creek, before the nature center existed, they walked with Audubon’s executive director, who shared that the organization wanted to buy the land to safeguard its native prairie.

And before she left, Mary had her moment. She recalls hearing the wind rustle through the grasses. She remembers looking skyward. And she remembers feeling at peace.

Mary, an author, instructor, public speaker, and therapist, understands the therapeutic value of grounding oneself in the earth. She’s written about it, she discusses the concept with her patients, and she invites her guests to Spring Creek to join her ritual. “It doesn’t just work for me. It works for anyone who tries it.”

Upon her first visit, Mary’s book, Reviving Ophelia, was a New York Times bestseller. The Piphers found themselves with the resources to help Audubon Nebraska purchase the land that is now Spring Creek Prairie Audubon Center. So they did, and continue to support it today. They even included Audubon Nebraska in their estate plans, ensuring we are able to provide a safe haven for birds for generations to come.

On trips to Rowe Sanctuary, Audubon Nebraska’s other center, Mary experiences something different: a sense of wonder. Every year her experience is the same, yet so different: “I think, ‘This is the best year ever.’ The reason? Every year, I experience a profound sense of wonder.”

At Spring Creek, the land immediately reminded her of her younger days living on a

American clinical psychologist and author

Mary Elizabeth Pipher (born October 21, ), also known as Mary Bray Pipher, is an American clinical psychologist and author. Her books include A Life in Light: Meditations on Impermanence () and Women Rowing North (), a book on aging gracefully. Prior to that, she wrote The Green Boat: Reviving Ourselves in Our Capsized Culture () and the bestseller Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls ().

Pipher received a Bachelor of Arts degree in anthropology from the University of California, Berkeley in and a PhD in clinical psychology from the University of Nebraska–Lincoln in She was a Rockefeller Scholar in Residence at Bellagio in She received two American Psychological Association Presidential Citations. She returned the one she received in 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".

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 and supported the Nebraska Legislative Bill , 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."

As of she resides in Lincoln, Nebraska.

Reviving Ophelia

Pipher is best known for a book she wrote in , 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,^&#

A Life in Light

In her luminous new memoir, Mary Pipher taps into a cultural moment to offer wisdom, hope, and insight into loss and change. Drawing from her expertise as a psychologist specializing in women, trauma, and the effect of culture on our mental health, she looks at her own story in A Life in Light. 

Her plainspoken depictions of her hard childhood and life’s difficulties are dappled with moments of joy and revelation and tragedies and ordinary miseries.  As a child, she was separated from her parents for long periods. Those separations affected her deeply, but in A Life in Light she explores what she’s learned about how to balance despair with joy. Pipher shares with readers every coping skill she has honed during her lifetime. She reminds us that there is a silver thread of resilience that flows through all of life.  In this book, she points us toward that light. 

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