Affirmative Psychotherapy

Catalog description

This course is designed to provide students with an introduction to the principles of the school of “affirmative” psychotherapy that emerged in the 1970s during LGBTQ+ liberation and has evolved into its own school of thought. This line of thought reached a significant consolidation with the publication of the American Psychological Association’s “Guidelines for Psychotherapy for Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual Clients” (APA, 2000) which itself built on a rich literature developed over a generation of engaged research, theory and practice, and additionally with “Guidelines for Psychological Practice with Transgender and Gender Nonconforming People.” A variety of texts have come out that further explored these concerns (see course texts, for example). The literature suggests that it is neither scientifically sound nor morally tenable to view LGBTQ+ individuals through an “illness” model. It is furthermore suggested that therapists need to become attuned to their own prejudicial biases and moreover become proactively educated in the culture, family/kinship structure and ethos of queer peoples, if they are to be both ethical and reasonably helpful to their LGBTQ+ as well as queer and questioning clients. This class attempts to develop a practical and “general form” of addressing these historic guidelines through sensitization, education and clinical practice. Through reading and understanding, we will attempt to bring together the sensibility of variety of different modalities (e.g., humanistic; psychodynamic; CBT; postmodern; and existential) to achieve a preliminary and respectfully eclectic “working model” of how to do “affirmative” therapy. Ideally, students should leave this class feeling that that they know how to conduct therapy with an LGBTQ+ client because they have gained the listening, intervention and treatment planning skills to intervene helpfully on overt and covert homo-negativity that distinguishes them as “competent” and “trained” in this emerging and urgently needed, new field.