Feminist Psychotherapy in an Indian Context: Deploying Intersectionality in Therapeutic Settings

This book offers a practical guide to feminist psychotherapy in India. Each chapter presents a brief literature review on the topic, the author’s personal experiences as a queer feminist mental health researcher-practitioner, real life case studies demonstrating therapeutic interventions, and guidelines to remember. The field of feminist psychotherapy is nascent in India and very few resources are catered to the Indian context or focus primarily on Indian research and practice. This book is therefore relatively unique in that it focusses on practical applications which professionals can use in their work across settings and for myriad concerns at the loci of the self, body, relationships, families, work and gender-based violence, and it utilizes contemporary intersectional feminist values and caters to clients across the gender spectrum to do so. As such, this book will be an invaluable resource for mental health professionals working in India or within Indian/South Asian diaspora. Key words: feminist therapy, intersectional mental health, gender and psychology

Jagruti Wandrekar is visiting faculty for the post graduate Counselling Psychology programme at St. Xavier’s College, Mumbai, India, teaching courses on trauma-focussed and queer affirmative mental health care. Wandrekar has 14 years of experience working at the intersections of gender, sexuality, and mental health across multiple settings such as clinics, non-profit organisations working in the field of community mental health, crisis counselling centres, rehabilitation centres, academia and research, and private practice. Her expertise in feminist counselling is derived from her work with marginalized women in a crisis counselling centre for survivors of gender-based violence in Mumbai in urban informal settlements, running a therapy group for LGBTQIA+ persons called SAAHAS, and working with women and gender diverse persons across varied socio-economic strata.