Feminist Intersectional Therapy: Fourth Wave Clinical Applications

How can we apply fourth wave feminist and intersectional theories in therapy?

Feminist intersectional therapy can be an essential tool for clinicians struggling through new territories of suffering under today’s oppressive cultural, social, and political norms and systems. Feminist Intersectional Therapy: Fourth Wave Clinical Applications is a foundational text that provides an advanced understanding of feminist and intersectional theories, and how they can be applied within the mental health disciplines. Editors Joanne Jodry and Kathleen McCleskey collaborate with other educators and clinical practitioners from a range of identities, professions, and theoretical orientations. Going beyond a single rigid framework, the author collective builds on feminist theory’s foundational roots, infused with intersectional theory, to conceptualize multiple, flexible clinical applications with original models and creative techniques.

This book addresses fundamental topics across all clinical mental health disciplines, from ethics and human development to various clinical modalities--individual, relational, family, group therapy, and clinical supervision. Specialty areas that are covered include spiritual issues, crisis intervention and trauma, substance use, career counseling, and sexual topics. It also discusses specific individuals with diverse identities--children, adolescents, and older adults; disabled individuals; BIPOC individuals; individuals with nondominant gender and affectional identities; and those from other oppressed and privileged identity groups. Lastly, this book explores future directions for feminist intersectional therapy, from higher education pedagogy to research.

About the Editors

Joanne Jodry, EdD, DMH, LPC, LCADC, is a middle-aged, middle-class, cisgender, heterosexual, Buddhist, French/ Irish heritage, White female. She has identified as a feminist for most of her adult life after being exposed to it in graduate school. She is an associate professor and the program director for the Clinical Mental Health Counseling program at Monmouth University, New Jersey. She holds two terminal degrees, one focused in Counseling and one focused in Spirituality. Her research areas of interest include feminist theory and spiritual healing applications (particularly Buddhist psychology and drama therapy). For personal meaning, Joanne is passionate and involved with a nonprofit, One Life to Love, where she leads a group of higher education students every year to Delhi, India, to learn from the beautiful children who survive poverty, hunger, and deplorable conditions to be cared for and loved @onelife2love. In addition to her academic work, she has a private practice grounded in feminist theory.

Kathleen McCleskey, PhD, NCC, is a middle-aged, middle-class, cisgender, married, childfree, Scots/Irish heritage, White female Episcopalian. She grew into a second wave feminist after her mother brought Ms. magazine into her childhood home, and she evolved into a third and fourth wave feminist through graduate school, professional experience, and personal life. She is an associate professor of Counselor Education at Longwood University in Virginia. Her research has, for many years, focused primarily on various applications of feminist theory to clinical training, supervision, and applications with clients. She has also focused scholarship on human sexuality and on death studies.

Contributors

Kristina Brown, Anne Callahan, Liz Curtis, Darcie Davis-Gage, Laura Dawson-Fend, Donnette Deigh, David Ford, Eunae Han, Takeesha Hawkins, Nicole Jackson Walker, Joanne Jodry, Justin Jordan, Carol Klose Smith, Ashley Krompier, Dominique Maywald, Kathleen McCleskey, Emily Miller, Mariah Moran, Chase Morgan-Swaney, Janys Murphy Rising, Amy Nourie, Candace N. Park, Ronee Rice, Janine Rowe, Barbara Shaya, Valerie Stolicker, Madalyn Stott, Michelle Sunkel, Amber Sutton, Olivia Turner, Sedaria LaNora Williams, Joelle Zabotka