My work is imbued with my commitment of over 30 years to the study and practice of anti-racism.

I was painfully aware as a child of the differences in how people are treated in our society, as well as the various ways I felt and behaved with those who were different than me along many locations of identity.  In college, I believe I unconsciously  began my study of racism and oppression through my courses in U.S. colonial and cultural history, and southern writers.  In graduate school, a year of the curriculum interrogated psychoanalytic theory and practice through a lens of anti-racism and intersectionality. My Master's Thesis was an exploratory study of racial bias in the white therapist/black client dyad.  

My personal self-study continued after school with ongoing reading in the literature of racism and other forms of oppression, as well as the fiction of non-White writers. My growing awareness and motivation to be a force for good found expression in putting forward my belief that such study has a place in continuing education in the mental health professions.  This culminated in becoming a co-founder and steering committee member of the Center for the Study of Race, Ethnicity and Culture at the Washington School of Psychiatry.  Here I often taught psychodynamic therapy through an anti-racism and intersectional lens, and presented cases at conferences from this understanding.

I believe that every one of us suffers from the malign effects of systemic racism and other practices of oppression and marginalization. Addressing this in our work as clinicians is to speak the unspeakable—a necessary part of micro- and macro-transformation. A gift of my studies has been to be able to listen for and hear the unconscious ways in which these constricting and traumatic effects manifest in therapy and case content, both manifestly and latently.  It is my intention to continue to develop my ability to address what I hear in a constructive way, within therapy and consultant client relationships, in order to relieve the suffering that comes from societal forces.