Feminist Therapy Supervision

In Feminist Therapy Supervision, guest expert supervisor Dr. Laura S. Brown demonstrates and discusses this approach to supervision. The goal of feminist supervision is to empower the supervisee by using analysis of gender and analysis of power to achieve the goal of an egalitarian supervisory relationship, while simultaneously acknowledging and embracing feminist political analysis and scholarship on the psychology of women and gender.

The feminist supervisor integrates a multiculturally informed approach to understanding the client's distress as well as the supervisee's challenges and capacities.

In this DVD, Dr. Brown and her supervisee engage in a supervisory session that shows how the identities for all parties in the supervision triad — client, supervisor, and supervisee — inform what occurs in both the supervision and the psychotherapy. Host Dr. Arpana G. Inman interviews Brown and her supervisee about their work together, exploring the constructs of this model as they examine the session in detail.

Feminist therapy supervision, like feminist therapy itself, has as its aim the empowerment of participants, using analysis of gender and analysis of power as strategies for achieving the goal of an egalitarian relationship between participants — in this case, between supervisor and supervisee.

The feminist supervisor explores the range of ways in which a supervisee can be empowered within the legal and ethical context of the supervisory relationship, and integrates a multiculturally informed approach to understanding the client and the supervisee. Feminist supervision is strengths-based, attends to the trainee's developmental capacities, and in all instances carefully considers how the intersectionalities of identities for all parties in the supervision triad influence both the supervision and the psychotherapy.

Dr. Laura S. Brown is in independent practice in Seattle, Washington. She is the founder and director of the Fremont Community Therapy Project, a training clinic serving low-income individuals (2006–2015). She has served on the faculties of Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, the University of Washington, and the Washington School of Professional Psychology.

Her publications include Feminist Therapy (part of the APA Theories of Psychotherapy series), Cultural Competence in Trauma Treatment: Beyond the Flashback, Your Turn for Care: Surviving the Aging and Death of the Adults Who Harmed You, and the award-winning Subversive Dialogues: Theory in Feminist Therapy.

She has been featured in three titles in the APA Psychotherapy Video series, including Feminist Therapy Over Time.

• Ballou, M., & Brown, L.S. (Eds.) (2002). Rethinking mental health and disorder: Feminist perspectives. New York: Guilford.
• Ballou, M., Hill, M., & West, C. (Eds.). (2008). Feminist theory and practice. New York: Springer
• Brown, L. S. (1994). Subversive dialogues: Theory in feminist therapy.  New York: Basic Books.
• Porter, N. (2009). Feminist and multicultural underpinnings to supervision: An overview. Women & Therapy, 33, 1–6.
• Szymanski, D.  (2003). The feminist supervision scale: A rational/theoretical approach.  Psychology of Women Quarterly, 27, 221–232.

APA Videos

• Feminist Therapy
  Laura S. Brown
• Feminist Therapy Over Time
  Laura S. Brown
• The Integrative Developmental Model of Supervision
  Brian McNeill
• Relational Psychodynamic Psychotherapy Supervision
  Joan E. Sarnat
• Systems Approach to Psychotherapy Supervision
  Elizabeth L. Holloway

APA Books

• Cultural Competence in Trauma Therapy: Beyond the Flashback
  Laura S. Brown
• Feminist Family Therapy: Empowerment in Social Context
  Edited by Louise B. Silverstein and Thelma Jean Goodrich
• Feminist Therapy
  Laura S. Brown
• Listening to Battered Women: A Survivor-Centered Approach to Advocacy, Mental Health, and Justice
  Lisa A. Goodman and Deborah Epstein
• Psychological Practice With Women: Guidelines, Diversity, Empowerment
  Edited by Carolyn Zerbe Enns, Joy K. Rice, and Roberta L. Nutt
• Supervision Essentials for the Feminist Psychotherapy Model of Supervision
  Laura S. Brown

• Supervision Essentials for the Feminist Psychotherapy Model of Supervision
  

  This book offers a theoretically-grounded yet practical approach to supervision based on the principles of feminist psychotherapy.