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    Critical Therapy
    Critical Therapy
    Critical Therapy
    Ebook74 pages46 minutes

    Critical Therapy

    By Silvia Dutchevici

    ()

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    About this ebook

    Not all revolutions begin in the street. Sometimes, they start in the psychotherapy office, on the couch.

     

    Psychotherapy needs a revolution. Historically, its goal has been to accommodate individuals to oppressive social systems. In this revealing and timely book, practicing psychotherapist, Silvia Dutchevici, provides a long-overdue social-justice model for therapy aiming toward liberation and personal agency. In Critical Therapy: Power and Liberation in Psychotherapy, patients and therapists are invited to look closely at ways power works in relationships. Drawing on liberation psychology scholarship and a decade of practice, Dutchevici examines how the therapeutic relationship itself is shaped by issues—such as money, race, class, and gender—often considered taboo.

     

    In offering more than comfort and insight, critical therapy supports patients as they awaken their own transformative power; create collaborative relationships, workspaces, and environments; and come to see themselves as agents of change in a still unfinished democracy.

     

    Written in simple and concise language, Critical Therapy is a must-read for anyone who has had, is thinking of having, or is practicing psychotherapy.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCritical Therapy Institute Press
    Release dateSep 7, 2022
    ISBN9780578377278
    Critical Therapy
    Author

    Silvia Dutchevici

    Silvia M. Dutchevici, MA, LCSW, is president and founder of the Critical Therapy Institute. A trained psychotherapist, Dutchevici, created critical therapy on perceiving a need for the theory and practice of psychology to reflect how race, class, gender, and religion intersect with psychological conflicts. She is a founding board member of Black Women's Blueprint and a member of the Physicians for Human Right’s Asylum Network, where she conducts psychological evaluations documenting evidence of torture and persecution for survivors fleeing danger in their home countries. She trained at the Bellevue/NYU Survivors of Torture Program, the Parent Child Center of the New York Psychoanalytic Society, and the New York Freudian Society.   Dutchevici has a master’s degree in social work from New York University and a master’s degree in psychology from the New School, and a bachelor’s degree in religious studies and political science from Fordham University. She has lectured and presented throughout the country on critical therapy, including at Fordham and NYU, and has been featured in the Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Psychology Today, The Guardian, International Business Times, and Women’s Health. 

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      Book preview

      Critical Therapy - Silvia Dutchevici

      Critical Therapy

      Praise for Critical Therapy

      When I first began writing about the terrain of radical and critical psychology, I would sometimes be asked a couple of seemingly simple questions: How can someone wary of traditional therapy’s political and personal blinders actually find a critical therapist conversant with the implications of oppression and injustice, and what might a critical therapy session actually look like? Sadly, perhaps reflecting my own blinders as a privileged overeducated white man, too often I was at a loss for good answers, unable to offer much beyond vague generalizations about what kinds of questions to ask potential therapists. Over the past decade, though, the work of the Critical Therapy Institute has made answering those questions much easier, for reasons clearly outlined in Silvia Dutchevici’s short new introduction to the Institute’s work. Along with a useful presentation of critical therapy’s core principles and an extended case description demonstrating the simultaneous focus on both personal and political transformation, Dutchevici dives headlong into two controversial topics that mainstream therapists more often push aside than address: the centrality of love and the significance of money in the therapeutic relationship. This book will lead to many conversations that need to be had.

      – DENNIS FOX, Emeritus Associate Professor of Legal Studies and Psychology, University of Illinois at Springfield; Co-founder, Radical Psychology Network; Co-editor, Critical Psychology: An Introduction

      Critical Therapy is a clarion call for the therapy of our times: a just, integrative practice that refuses to treat patients outside the context of their political and social reality. This is the pathway to true individual and collective wellness. Crucial reading for therapists and patients alike.

      – V (formerly EVE ENSLER), Author of The Vagina Monologues and The Apology

      Critical Therapy: Power and Liberation in Psychotherapy is a beautifully written book that is essential reading for clinicians working with a diverse population. By reading this book the reader will understand the tenets of critical therapy in a clear and concise manner, as well as the importance of addressing the contextual reality of the patient that ultimately would lead to an attainment of personal and structural changes for the seeker of psychological services. The author weaves her clinical experience and personal history with true caring.

      – CARMEN INOA VAZQUEZ, PhD, ABPP, Clinical Psychologist

      Critical Therapy: Power and Liberation in Psychotherapy, is a well written insightful analysis of critical therapy and why it makes a stronger impact on psychotherapy patients. Like Silvia, I vehemently agree that ALL persons deserve access to therapy to support their mental health, especially those who have bigger barriers to do so because of economic hardship. As a survivor of sexual abuse and a Black woman, I know too well how difficult it is to break the intergenerational cycles of trauma. Critical therapy can be part of the long-term solution.

      – NUBIA DUVALL WILSON, Author, Producer, Mental Health Advocate

      Critical Therapy is an accessible, important, must-read text for mental health professionals. It identifies the ways one can integrate a relational approach with critical consciousness in therapy and practice logistics. Inviting readers to consider what power dynamics, oppression, liberation, worth, and love mean for therapists and clients, Critical Therapy draws from an evidence-base of liberation psychology scholarship and a decade of practice to briefly present exemplars and recommendations. I look forward to using this as a primer in practicum classes and supervision going forward.

      – CANDICE NICOLE HARGONS, PhD, Associate Professor, University of Kentucky, and Director, Center for Healing Racial Trauma

      This is a beautifully written and inspiring book that includes socio-economic aspects of Critical Therapy, and makes connections between worker rights, economic equity and mental health. Dutchevici explains, for example, how Critical Therapists earn living wages, and how their sliding scale formula ensures that the waiting room is a place of diversity and equity that is often not experienced by clients in other mental health settings. So much about how we live and work produces tremendous stress because of the exploitative systems that surround us. We need to transform our society so that we engage in workplace democracy, economic cooperation and non-exploitative solidarity economics and mutual aid. Critical Therapy shows us how our mental health services can be part of such a transformation, and will support our liberation.

      – JESSICA GORDON-NEMBHARD,

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