pilar hernandez-wolfe

This chapter offers a perspective that promotes peace and forgiveness through a framework of accountability and reparations. Understanding the contemporary political and peace-building efforts in the India and Pakistan conflict requires an analysis of India’s history of colonization. We review the historical context of the current conflict and offer an overview on the pre-partition, partition, and post-partition periods.

ABSTRACT In this paper I revisit my training experience in the family therapy specialty at a counseling program. The basic question I am addressing is how meaning is constructed out of social experiences and memory. Taking a feminist and family therapy orientations as a starting point, I consider the interaction between personal narratives and clinical theories, and the implication of this interaction for therapy. In particular, I examine my experience with silence as a mark of social constraint but also as a sign of struggle. I suggest that certain narrative approaches involving collaborative negotiations of meaning can productively address the issue of silence. Finally, I suggest that "narrativizing" can provide a mapping function to the maze of discontinuities that arise in social interaction, especially in the case of cultural dislocations.

... Aileen Torres is a doctoral student at Carlos Albiza University, Puerto Rico. ... In particu-lar, only a few authors (Lara, 2000; Meertens, 1998; Meertens & Segura, 1996; Rodriguez, 1997; Salazar, 1993) have emphasized a gendered view in the contemporary analysis of the ...

An integrative training framework articulating multiple perspectives on the impact of trauma work is offered with a training/supervision exercise to address the complex and systemic relationships that affect therapists in both positive and negative manners. The concepts of vicarious trauma, vicarious resilience, compassion fatigue, resilience, posttraumatic growth, altruism born of suffering, and reciprocity are reviewed. The paper highlights the importance of vicarious resilience as a dimension of experience that counteracts the normally occurring fatiguing processes that trauma therapists experience.

This study explores how family therapy educators from privileged social locations understand issues of privilege and the process by which they integrate their personal and professional journeys to create and model equity in family therapy training and professional development.  These educators developed awareness about issues of privilege and oppression and owned their privilege.  Increased awareness involved personal struggles with guilt and managing internalized voices of prejudice that are constantly reinforced in society.  These educators adopted a stance of action and accountability for equity. We hypothesize that the process leading to owning one’s privilege involves the ability to be compassionate for others’ suffering and one’s own limitations.

This study explores the formulation of vicarious resilience as a useful concept in the middle school age school educational arena. It addresses the question of how teachers who work with learners who experienced dislocation and adversity are affected by the children’s stories of resilience. It focuses on the teachers’ interpretations of their learners’ stories, and how they make sense of the impact these stories have had on their lives. In semi-structured interviews, 21 teachers who work in Accelerated Learning programs in Cali, Colombia were interviewed about their perceptions of their learners’ overcoming of adversity. Data was analyses through the Consensual Qualitative Research methodology (CQR) to describe the themes that speak about the effects of witnessing how learners coped constructively with adversity. These themes are discussed to advance the concept of vicarious resilience and how it can contribute to sustaining and empowering teachers dealing with challenging children and trauma.

In this article we propose the construct of cultural equity to guide family
and community therapeutic work that addresses social and interpersonal
complexity from a social justice perspective. Cultural equity encompasses
the multiplicity of personal, social, and institutional locations that frame
identities in therapeutic practice by locating these complexities within a
societal matrix that shapes relationships: power, privilege, and oppression.
We locate our work vis-à-vis the cultural competence movement to situate
cultural equity theoretically and politically. We illustrate the application of
cultural equity in therapy and discuss implications for theory and practice.

This study explores the formulation of a new concept: vicarious resilience. It addresses the question of how psychotherapists who work with survivors of political violence or kidnapping are affected by their clients’ stories of resilience. It focuses on the psychotherapists’ interpretations of their clients’ stories, and how they make sense of the impact these stories have had on their lives. In semi-structured interviews, 12 psychotherapists who work with victims of political violence and kidnapping were interviewed about their perceptions of their clients’ overcoming of adversity. A phenomenological analysis of the transcripts was used to describe the themes that speak about the effects of witnessing how clients cope constructively with adversity. These themes are discussed to advance the concept of vicarious resilience and how it can contribute to sustaining and empowering trauma therapists.

This essay introduces the contributions of the Latin American decolonizing paradigm as a framework to understand Latina’s hybrid experiences and ways of being in the U.S and Latin America. It integrates borderland epistemology to address other knowledges involving mental health practices with case illustrations. In addition, it advances the need to integrate the notions of cultural equity and cultural humility as a way to address contemporary discourses on culture and mental health from a decolonizing paradigm.

Latinos in the U.S. comprise diverse populations that differ on a range of factors including migration, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status. Some are colonized minorities; others came as war and political refugees; others migrated by choice, and others are undocumented workers. The cultural landscapes in the U.S. and in many Latin American countries are no different: Diversity, migration, and a history of colonization and mestizaje are part of what we live and breathe today. The reader will find a borderlands’ perspective on mental health to assist new generations of Latin Americans  and those involved in Latino culture  in understanding how the colonization of the Americas is still tied to current issues of migration, identity, trauma, and resistance, and how practices of well-being have emerged out of the wound of coloniality. It addresses well-being through the integration of a decolonization paradigm, borderlands theory, and social justice approaches in couple and family therapy.

"In this paper, we articulate foundational concepts for a supervision framework from a critical postcolonial
perspective: intersectionality, power, and relational safety in context. We identify opportunities, challenges,
and dilemmas encountered when engaging with students and colleagues in examining dimensions
of privilege and oppression in supervision-of-supervision and supervision of clinical work conducted by
clinicians in training. We highlight experiences of supervisees and supervisors of color throughout the
paper, bringing together our own voices as a supervisor of color and White supervisor via our shared
postcolonial lens to advance dialogue among scholars of all ethnicities. We also differentiate our
experiences, purposefully centering the voices of supervisors of color to further a critical postcolonial
agenda."