Clinical Psychologist
A Grammar of Power in Psychotherapy is now released in Swedish for the academic publisher Studentlitteratur. The Swedish title is: Makt och privilegier i psykoterapi. If you want to review it for course adaption, please contact Fanny.vonHomeyer@studentlitteratur.se
The translation is done by me in close collaboration with Susanne Uhler.
I was honoured to be the Erikson Scholar at Austen Riggs Center in Spring 2020 but came home premature due to the the pandemic. In August I had a virtual Friday Night Lecture: the Yasmin Roberts Memorial Lecture. The lecture is now avaliable online for free. I am grateful to the Austen Riggs Center community for the opportunity to be an Erikson Scholar, very rewarding and inspiring!
This lecture will focus on the seldom-addressed therapeutic dyad in which social privilege favors the patient. Through her matrix of relative privilege, Fors will discuss how social power issues are inevitably negotiated in the therapeutic setting and how this process plays out in transference, countertransference, and resistance. Drawing on empirical research from other areas on how people handle sudden loss of privilege, Fors explores the implications of such disparities and explores playful (versus more narcissistically defensive) ways to handle clinical situations in which a patient is dependent on a socially less-privileged therapist.
Identify the therapeutic dynamics of the situation of “privilege favoring the patient”.
Distinguish between playful way versus malign narcissistic ways to handle confused subordination in psychotherapy.
Recognize power of Proxy.
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August 21 – Friday Night Lecture at Austen Riggs Center
When Social Privilege Favors the Patient: Power Negotiations and Confused Subordination in Psychotherapy
Yasmin Roberts Memorial Lecture
Virtual Friday Night Guest Lecture with Malin Fors
NOTE: This is s a VIRTUAL event and requires advance registration.
Friday Night Guest Lectures are designed for mental health professionals, offered free of charge, and provide 1.0 continuing education credit.
This lecture will focus on the seldom-addressed therapeutic dyad in which social privilege favors the patient. Through her matrix of relative privilege, Fors will discuss how social power issues are inevitably negotiated in the therapeutic setting and how this process plays out in transference, countertransference, and resistance. Drawing on empirical research from other areas on how people handle sudden loss of privilege, Fors explores the implications of such disparities and explores playful (versus more narcissistically defensive) ways to handle clinical situations in which a patient is dependent on a socially less-privileged therapist.
For questions, additional information, and to register please visit https://www.austenriggs.org/event/when-social-privilege-favors-patient-power-negotiations-and-confused-subordination.
Due to covid-19 my practice is transferred to telehealth system: confrere. (And phone).
My APA dvd has now reached the APA top 10 bestseller list!
The name of the dvd is “The Dynamics of Power and Privilege in Psychotherapy”
Watch a teaser here
Order here:
Use promocode POWER20 for a discount while checking out.
My work on Geographical Narcissism made it to rural Australia!
“Rural professionals often laugh with recognition when hearing of geographic narcissism.”
My Keynote presentation went very well!
Congress and Annual Meeting of Nordic Association for Clinical Sexology Gothenburg, Sweden, 19-22 September 2019: The Sexual Urge – Crossing Borders and Breaking Boundaries
“Honoring the Stonewall Fiftieth Anniversary:
Riots and Riotousness – A Celebrations of Humor as Queer Resistance”
New book review of my book! Read it here.
This essay is a response to a paper by Janna Sandmeyer which received the Ralph Roughton award. Sandemeyer examines Jule Miller’s 1985 article, ”How Kohut actually worked,” in which Miller describes Kohut’s supervision of his work with a patient struggling with issues of homosexuality. I expand on Sandmeyer’s comments on the heteronormativity and homophobia in Miller´s case description and make observations about the quality of the supervisory relationship between Miller and Kohut. I argue that this treatment was in reality reparative therapy and should be named as such. I posit a parallel to the conversion therapist David Matheson, who recently came out as gay, and suggest that if I am right, Miller and Kohut deserve our compassion. But to grieve and move beyond our crimes of the past, we also need to hold them, and our whole field, accountable. While acknowledging and admiring Sandmeyer´s important contributions to the exploration of heteronormativity and homophobia, I submit that the first step to empowerment and forgiveness is to call a reparative therapy what it was.
