Individual and Group Consultation
If you are interested in learning more about interpersonal and relational psychoanalysis, I offer individual and group supervision which will intensify your awareness and ease in the personal use of self to help others. This knowledge is experiential and didactic rather than a textbook approach to learning about therapy. I have particular expertise in the areas of feminist theory, psychological trauma, and human development and can conduct short workshops or longer in-depth classes on these topics to educational institutions and medical practices.
Topics of Cultural Relevance
Abstract: The Necessity and Limitations of Guiltiness and Empathy: A Bridge Too Short
Scientific Session
Seattle Psychoanalytic Society and Institute
December 15, 2020
“I have no creative use for guilt, yours or my own. Guilt is only another way of avoiding informed action, of buying time out of the pressing need to make clear choices, out of the approaching storm that can feed the earth as well as bend the trees. If I speak to you in anger, at least I have spoken to you: I have not put a gun to your head and shot you down in the street; I have not looked at your bleeding sister’s body and asked, “What did she do to deserve it?””
Audre Lorde, 1981
This paper will discuss and unpack the concept of the perverse pact in Adrienne Harris’s paper, The Perverse Pact: Racism and White Privilege, 2019, American Imago, 76(3). I will examine the conscious and unconscious forces that lead us to tenaciously hold on to our white privilege, and challenge the assumption that we are holding onto what we do not want to lose or give up, such as our identity, position, and possessions. I will suggest that we have already lost our humanity and intersubjectivity with this perspective. I will utilize Judith Butler’s concept of the radical equality of lives, and Jessica Benjamin’s concepts of “only one can live” to assert that we mistakenly value and enact the individual good over the collective good. In doing so, we impoverish ourselves and limit access for others to empowerment and equity. Finally, I will consider how we must change, not only our psychology, but our cultural and institutional policies to move toward antiracism and reparation.
Podcast Interview
Interviewed on Between Us: A Psychotherapy Podcast, a show that explores the relationships between psychotherapists and patients with John Totten and Mason Neely.
Episode 22, Unsilencing the Normal, February 13, 2019
“What are the everyday tragedies you experience? From the universal affliction of aging to the specific harm of racism and sexism, our culture is talented at ignoring the daily trauma of human existence, and normalizing the grievous. In our episode today, John sits down with Dr. Karen Weisbard to discuss her process of waking up to these realities and what it means to occupy different spaces as a therapist- between the consulting room, the mountains, and even the tennis court.”
Presentations
From my clinical experience I have written and presented the following papers at professional meetings:
- Unsilencing Ordinary: Help! My Children are Leaving Me
IFPE’S 29th Annual Interdisciplinary Conference, Unsilencing, Seattle, WA, October 26, 2018 - Finding and Losing Robert; Losing and Finding Mother
Twelfth International Evolving British Object Relations Conference, The Body as Psychoanalytic Object: Clinical Applications from Winnicott to Bion and Beyond, Seattle, WA, October 14, 2018 - Hineni – Here I Am: A Personal Awakening and Clinical Experience with Whiteness, Police Violence, and Family Relations
International Association for Relational Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy, 15th Annual Conference, Hope and Dread: Therapists and Patients in an Uncertain World, New York, NY, June 16, 2018 - The Skin that Binds: Paradox, Pain, and Pathos
The 27th Annual Interdisciplinary Conference, SKIN of the International Federation for Psychoanalytic Education, October 29, 2016 - Enough with the Relating! Discussion of Doug Hansen’s paper, Can We Talk About How Hot it is in Here?
Division of Psychoanalysis (39) of the American Psychological Association Spring Meeting, Atlanta, Georgia, April 7, 2016 - Motherhood in the City of the 12th Man
Popular Culture/American Culture Association National Conference, Seattle, Washington, March 22, 2016 - Discussion of Steven Knoblauch’s paper, Body Rhythms and the Unconscious: Clinical Implications
Seattle School of Theology and Psychology, Seattle, Washington, September 18, 2015 - Shifting States of Activism: An Analyst Journeys to Africa
International Forum for Psychoanalytic Education, Portland, Oregon, November 2, 2012 - Leaving Insurance: Risk, Paradox, and Creativity
2012 IARPP 10th Anniversary Conference, New York, New York, March 1, 2012 - Leaving Insurance: Risk, Paradox, and Subjectivity
2011 Forum, Annual Conference of the Northwest Alliance for Psychoanalytic Study, Seattle, Washington, April 9, 2011 - Daring to be Oneself: Shifting States of Truth
20th Annual Conference, International Federation for Psychoanalytic Education, Seattle, Washington, November 6, 2009 - Psychoanalysis Face to Face: The Relational Turn
(With Cannerelli, J.) Alumni Association of the Existential-Phenomenological Psychology Program, Seattle University, Seattle, Washington, April 28, 2008 - Personal Omissions: The Personal is the Professional
(With Newcombe, R, & Cannerelli, J.) The Forum, Annual Conference, Northwest Alliance for Psychoanalytic Study, Seattle, Washington, May 10, 2007 - Being and Thirdness: Re-Visioning Psychoanalytic Education
94th Annual Meeting, American Psychoanalytic Association, Seattle, Washington, June 12, 2005 - Making Room: Finding Intimacy in all the Right Places
15th Annual Conference, International Federation for Psychoanalytic Education, Chicago, Illinois, November 6, 2004 - Don’t Judge A Book By It’s Cover: How One Analyst’s Identification With Her Patient Obscured The Differences
Pacific Northwest Psychoanalytic Society, October 2, 2002 - Parallel Paths Divided: A Relational Look at Kleinien Theory
Northwest Alliance for Psychoanalytic Study, Seattle, Washington, March 8, 2001
Additional Teaching Experience
In addition to instructing professional and student psychologists, I have also worked as an instructor for the following:
- Roots of Empathy: Program instructor for grades 3-5 at Thornton Creek Elementary School in Seattle, WA from 2009-2011