The Trauma Therapist From the archives: Unpacking Race, Class, Gender & Trauma with Silvia Dutchevici
Feb 27, 2025
30:48
Silvia M. Dutchevici, MA, LCSW is the Critical Therapy Institute (CTI) founder and president.
With more than 20 years of experience in social services and a passion for psychotherapy, Dutchevici (pronounced “doot-KAY-vitch”) created CTI when she perceived the need to expand psychoanalytic praxis to reflect how race, class, gender, and religion intersect with psychological conflicts. Silvia has an intensive background in psychoanalytic theory and trauma, with a particular focus on torture.
However, after seeing that traditional psychoanalysis was not able to adequately transform and heal her patients, she embarked on an extended period of research and training. Drawing on liberation psychology and critical pedagogy scholarship and combining them with her real-life experience as a practicing psychotherapist, she founded CTI in 2012; it focuses on teaching, research, and the application of critical therapy in advisory, consulting, and educational services.
Unlike traditional therapists, critical therapists work from the premise that the personal is political. To be more effective, psychotherapy must therefore interrogate the patient’s as well as the therapist’s worldview. Engaging in power analysis, critical therapists explore deeply how power affects the patient’s and therapist’s identities as well as their relationship with one another. CTI offers a four-year training program for psychotherapists, as well as workshops on various clinical issues.
In This Episode
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With more than 20 years of experience in social services and a passion for psychotherapy, Dutchevici (pronounced “doot-KAY-vitch”) created CTI when she perceived the need to expand psychoanalytic praxis to reflect how race, class, gender, and religion intersect with psychological conflicts. Silvia has an intensive background in psychoanalytic theory and trauma, with a particular focus on torture.
However, after seeing that traditional psychoanalysis was not able to adequately transform and heal her patients, she embarked on an extended period of research and training. Drawing on liberation psychology and critical pedagogy scholarship and combining them with her real-life experience as a practicing psychotherapist, she founded CTI in 2012; it focuses on teaching, research, and the application of critical therapy in advisory, consulting, and educational services.
Unlike traditional therapists, critical therapists work from the premise that the personal is political. To be more effective, psychotherapy must therefore interrogate the patient’s as well as the therapist’s worldview. Engaging in power analysis, critical therapists explore deeply how power affects the patient’s and therapist’s identities as well as their relationship with one another. CTI offers a four-year training program for psychotherapists, as well as workshops on various clinical issues.
In This Episode
---
If you’d like to support The Trauma Therapist Podcast and the work I do you can do that here with a monthly donation of $5, $7, or $10: Donate to The Trauma Therapist Podcast.
Click here to join my email list and receive podcast updates and other news.
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-trauma-therapist--5739761/support.