The Self of the Therapist

Wednesday 6:00pm- 7:15pm PST on Zoom starting Wednesday, September 16 

$400- sliding scale available for BIPOC clinicians

Sign up here

Can I show my tattoos? What do I say if I’m sick? Can I wear wet hair to session? What should I reveal or not about my personal life? These are the questions we ask ourselves as therapists.

This six week class is all about self-disclosure. We will start by reading some foundational theory on intersubjectivity, or the “developmentally achieved capacity to recognize another person as a separate center of subjective experience” (Lewis Aron). Then we will move on to individual issues in self-disclosure: race, money, sexual attraction, the body, and social media.

Through reading, discussion, and in-class writing reflections, you’ll gain a greater understanding of your own values and ethics around self-disclosure, helping you feel more confident in showing (or not showing) yourself as a therapist, as well as being able to think clearly about the choices you make and have made.

Week One: Intersubjective Theory and Self-disclosure

Lewis Aron, "The Patient's Experience of the Analyst's Subjectivity" 

Optional: Jessica Benjamin, Beyond Doer and Done To (excerpts)

Week Two: Money

Kachina Myers, “Show Me the Money:(the “Problem” of) the Therapist's Desire, Subjectivity, and Relationship to the Fee”

Week Three: “Disclosing” race

Kimberlyn Leary, “Race, Self-Disclosure, And “Forbidden Talk”: Race And Ethnicity In Contemporary Clinical Practice”

Week Four: Illness and the body

Barbara Pizer, "When the Analyst Is Ill: Dimensions of Self-Disclosure"

Week Five: Erotic countertransference

Jody Davies, Love in the Afternoon: A Relational Reconsideration of Desire and Dread in the Countertransference  

Week Six: Social Media

Greta Kaluzeviciute, Social Media and Its Impacts on Therapeutic Relationships