Monthly Decolonizing Therapy reading group
An invitation to join an online monthly reading group that will closely and wholeheartedly engage with Dr Jennifer Mullen’s book Decolonizing Therapy: Oppression, Historical Trauma, and Politicizing Your Practice (2023). This work is an urgent and challenging call for therapists to politicise their practice through an emotional decolonial lens.
Through reading and discussing a chapter together each month*, and supported by Dr Jennifer Mullen’s ‘Book Club Discussion Guide’, we will undertake age-old practices of communal learning, cultivating collective wisdom, building solidarities and engaging the feminist imagination.
Starting on June 14th 2024, we will meet together on Zoom on the second Friday of each month from 3.30pm – 5pm GMT, over 10 months. Numbers will be limited to enable our shared discussion. We ask for a joining fee of £50.00 that covers all 10 meetings together to support the work of the Feminist Therapy Network. A CPD certificate of up to 15 hours can be provided upon request.
This is a participatory group. To support our shared community of inquiry we ask that Zoom cameras be on (if this really is not possible, please be prepared to contribute via the chat function).
Open to all therapeutic practitioners at any stage of training or practice. For more information and to join this reading group, you can book your place via the FTN eventbrite page.
About Decolonizing Therapy
“An essential work that centers colonial and historical trauma in a framework for healing, Decolonizing Therapy illuminates that all therapy is — and always has been — inherently political. To better understand the mental health oppression and institutional violence that exists today, we must become familiar with the root of disembodiment from our histories, homelands, and healing practices. Only then will readers see how colonial, historical, and intergenerational legacies have always played a role in the treatment of mental health.
This book is the emotional companion and guide to decolonization. It is an invitation for Eurocentrically trained clinicians to acknowledge privileged and oppressed parts while relearning what we thought we knew. Ignoring collective global trauma makes delivering effective therapy impossible; not knowing how to interrogate privilege (as a therapist, client, or both) makes healing elusive; and shying away from understanding how we as professionals may be participating in oppression is irresponsible.”
Note - Publisher W.W. Norton & Company is currently offering a 35% discount on the book. Use discount code WN119 at the checkout.
For more information on the Feminist Therapy Network, please visit the website.
*Weeks 1 and 10 will include reading the introduction with chapter 1 and the conclusion with chapter 10.