I am a psychologist in private practice in Berkeley, California. For about 30 years I have worked with children, adults, and couples, employing a psychodynamic, psychoanalytically oriented approach to our work together. My belief is that we are all social creatures and that our psyches are initially formed through our relationships and attachments to parents or caregivers, whose own psychological structures develop within historical events, geography and culture.
Thus we process our environments not only through our own direct experiences but also through experiences transmitted consciously and unconsciously by our families as well. As a result of this belief, it has been important to me to provide psychodynamic treatment to people of diverse backgrounds. Out of this experience I have written a book, entitled African American Patients in Psychotherapy: Understanding the Psychological Effects of Racism and Oppression (Routledge, 2018).
My interest in cultural and historical aspects of psychological experience also has contributed to, and been deepened by, 20 years of doing psychological evaluations for scores of refugees as part of their asylum processes.
Thus we process our environments not only through our own direct experiences but also through experiences transmitted consciously and unconsciously by our families as well. As a result of this belief, it has been important to me to provide psychodynamic treatment to people of diverse backgrounds. Out of this experience I have written a book, entitled African American Patients in Psychotherapy: Understanding the Psychological Effects of Racism and Oppression (Routledge, 2018).
My interest in cultural and historical aspects of psychological experience also has contributed to, and been deepened by, 20 years of doing psychological evaluations for scores of refugees as part of their asylum processes.
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African American Patients in Psychotherapy: Understanding the Psychological Effects of Racism and Oppression by Ruth Fallenbaum, Routledge, 2018.
African American Patients in Psychotherapy integrates history, current events, arts, psychoanalytic thinking, and case studies to provide a model for understanding the social and historical dimensions of psychological development across African American communities.
Among the topics included are psychological consequences of slavery and Jim Crow, the black patient and the white therapist, the toll of even "small" racist enactments, the black patient's uneasy relationship with health care providers, and a revisiting of the idea of "black rage."
African American Patients in Psychotherapy integrates history, current events, arts, psychoanalytic thinking, and case studies to provide a model for understanding the social and historical dimensions of psychological development across African American communities.
Among the topics included are psychological consequences of slavery and Jim Crow, the black patient and the white therapist, the toll of even "small" racist enactments, the black patient's uneasy relationship with health care providers, and a revisiting of the idea of "black rage."
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