Learning and Teaching Systemic Therapy

Ep 16: Queer-contextualized Family Therapy - A conversation with the editors

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In today’s episode, we discuss the book Queer-Contextualized Family Therapy: Toward Radically Inclusive Theory and Practice, and I’m joined by the book’s editors, Dr. Erica Hartwell and Dr. Lindsay Edwards. 

Dr. Erica Hartwell is an Associate Professor of Marriage, Couple, and Family Therapy in the Lewis and Clark Graduate School of Education and Counseling. Her teaching, supervision, and scholarship is focused on creating community, compassion, and justice, with a focus on queer and trans mental health and well-being. In 2023, she received Fairfield University’s highest faculty honor, the Robert E. Wall award, in recognition of her forthcoming book, Queer-Contextualized Family Therapy: Toward Radical Theory and Practice. She served as the first chair of AAMFT’s Queer and Trans Advocacy Network and led the development of the Clinical Guidelines for LGBTQIA Affirming Marriage and Family Therapy. As an AAMFT Board Member, she worked on the Gender-Affirming Care Position Statement. 

Dr. Edwards is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist and an AAMFT Approved Supervisor. She dedicated 11 years to academia, serving as faculty within several accredited couple and family therapy programs. During this time, she conducted research, published articles, and provided didactic instruction and clinical supervision to MFTs in training. Currently, Dr. Edwards serves as a manager for Colorado's Behavioral Health Administration, overseeing the Children and Youth Mental Health Treatment Act and other critical mental health initiatives. Beyond her administrative role, she specializes in LGBTQ+ inclusive family therapy and remains deeply committed to the field by providing private practice supervision and supervision mentorship.  

Dr. Lindsay Edwards can be contacted through her website:  https://www.drlindsayedwards.com/

Questions we discussed in this episode: 

  1. You frame queer-contextualizing as a beginning framework, not “the answer,” but a question for the field. Share with us what this framework looks like.
  2. What are some questions you want clinicians, supervisors, and educators to keep asking as they apply this framework to any model (including models that may not be covered in the book)?
  3. A key thread you wanted to highlight in this text is that it is not only about queerness, but about reenvisioning how our foundational models could be reimagined to tend to any marginalized identity/positioning.
  4. When a clinician is working in a country or cultural context with a different dominant discourse, what are some “dominant assumptions” you recommend they identify and unpack?
  5. The table of contents applies queer-contextualizing to multiple foundational approaches (Structural, Strategic, Satir, EFT, Bowen, Contextual, Gottman, SFBT, Collaborative).
    1. Please share with us an example of how a queer-contextualizing framework changes case conceptualization and intervention planning from a Bowenian approach?
    2. Please share with us an example of how a queer-contextualizing framework changes case conceptualization and intervention planning from a Satir approach?
    3. Your editorial process itself sounds aligned with the book’s values: It started with an open call, intensive 1:1 work with authors, and inviting contributors to “say the wild thing” outside typical academic constraints. What did you learn from editing this way, and how do you hope it influences how we write, teach, and evaluate scholarship in our training programs?

      4. Purchase the book here: https://www.routledge.com/Queer-Contextualized-Family-Therapy-Toward-Radically-Inclusive-Theory-and-Practice/Hartwell-Edwards/p/book/9781032311265

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      Learning and Teaching Systemic TherapyBy Society for the Teaching of Marriage and Family Therapy