#23 - Interview: Dr. Lara Sheehi, Decolonizing Psychoanalysis and Psychology Curricula

Dr. Lara Sheehi (she/her/hers) is an Assistant Professor in Clinical Psychology at George Washington University. She works on decolonial struggles as well as power, race, class and gender constructs and dynamics within psychoanalysis, and practices from a trans-inclusive feminist and liberation theory model. Dr. Sheehi is the Secretary of the Society for Psychoanalysis and Psychoanalytic Society (SPPP) and is the chair of the Teachers Academy of the American Psychoanalytic Association. She is an executive committee member of The American Psychological Association (APA), Division 39 (Psychoanalysis) Section IX (Psychoanalysis for Social Responsibility), is the co-chair of the Multicultural Concerns Committee, and is a mentor in the Minority Scholars Program. She is on the editorial board for the Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association (JAPA) and Psychoanalysis, Culture and Society (PCS). She is on the advisory board to the USA-Palestine Mental Health Network and Psychoanalysis for Pride, as well as a member of the Taskforce for Indigenous Psychology. 
Today, we discuss our relationship to structures and knowing our position within those structures. More specifically, we discuss curriculum development and the burden often placed on marginalized students, being tasked to hold the affect in the room and educate others. We also engaged in a discussion about the seduction of identifying geographical differences of the accessibility of specific ideas, thought, and theory and we explored how this seduction displaces attention from the very real structural issues that are in place across the US, not just within the Midwest. We also briefly discuss how many clinicians forget that history is in fact how we still practice today; our responsibility is to be accountable for all of psychoanalysis, especially what is occurring present day. We are not in a position, as professionals, psychologists, or psychoanalysts to critique where we once were when we are still there today. 
Check out her Twitter feed - you won't regret it. 
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