Expired Ecoinformed Couple and Family Therapy, Systems Thinking, and Social Justice [Online]

Couple and family therapy can be ecoinformed. In this day and age, it is imperative that we take steps to work from relational perspectives that move toward biocentrism and incorporate our relationship with non-human beings, space and time with history and social context. Recognizing and integrating our relationships with nonhuman beings to our social justice concerns is essential to choosing to how to work in ways that sustain the planet and free us to engage in more healing, emancipatory therapeutic work.

This workshop will describe key epistemological and social issues contributing to anthropocentrism in our field; it will discuss seminal systems theories’ concepts and a decolonization perspective as alternatives to ground our work; and it will illustrate how to recognize and incorporate an eco and socially aware perspective in therapy. Clinical vignettes involving relationships with companion animals and the plant world will be incorporated and participants will be encouraged to envision their practices functioning in more ecoaffirming and sustainable way.

Learning Objectives:

• Identify epistemological and social issues contributing to anthropocentrism in couple and family therapy
• Identify and integrate ecological systems thinking and social justice perspectives in our work
• Analyze and discuss how and when to integrate human-animal bond, plant and other nature based in therapy

Presenter:

Dr. Pilar Hernández-Wolfe, is Professor in the Marriage, Couple and Family Therapy Program at Lewis and Clark College and she has a private practice in Portland, Oregon. She is an AAMFT approved supervisor. She is guest faculty at the Universidad Javeriana, Cali in Colombia. Her work is widely published in numerous family therapy and psychology journals. She is the author of “A Borderlands’ view of Latinos, Latin Americans and Decolonization. Rethinking Mental Health,” and “La Resiliencia Vicaria en las Relaciones de Ayuda.” She pioneered the concept of vicarious resilience in the context of torture survivor treatment in the U.S. and mental health services addressing politically based violence in Colombia.