Relational-Cultural Therapy (Theories of Psychotherapy)
Judith V. Jordan, PhD, is the director of the Jean Baker Miller Training Institute and founding scholar at the Stone Center at Wellesley College. In addition to her position at the Wellesley Centers for Women, Dr. Jordan is an assistant clinical professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. After graduating phi beta kappa and magna cum laude from Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, she earned her PhD in clinical psychology at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where she received special commendation for outstanding academic performance. She was the director of psychology training as well as the director of the Women s Studies program at McLean Hospital, a Harvard Teaching Hospital. For the past 20 years she has worked with her colleagues Jean Baker Miller, Irene Stiver, and Jan Surrey on the development of what has come to be known as relational cultural theory.Dr. Jordan coauthored the bookWomen s Growth in Connectionand editedWomen s Growth in Diversity and The Complexity of Connection. She has published over 40 original reports and 25 chapters, and coauthored three books. She is the recipient of the Massachusetts Psychology Association s Career Achievement Award for Outstanding Contributions to the Advancement of Psychology as a Science and a Profession. She was also selected as the Mary Margaret Voorhees Distinguished Professor at the Menninger School of Psychiatry and Mental Health Science in the spring of 1999. She received the annual psychiatric resident s outstanding teacher of the year award at McLean Hospital in Belmont, Massachusetts, and is included in Who s Who in America. She was awarded an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters in 2001 from New England College in Henniker, New Hampshire, with utmost admiration for [her] contribution to science and the practice of psychology. In 2002, Dr. Jordan received a Special Award from the Feminist Therapy Institute in recognition of outstanding contributions to the development of feminist psychology. She is on the editorial board of theJournal of Clinical Psychology: In Sessionand theJournal of Creativity and Mental Health. She has written, lectured and conducted workshops nationally and internationally on the subjects of women s psychological development, gender differences, mothers and daughters, mothers and sons, empathy, psychotherapy, marginality, diversity, mutuality, courage, competence and connection, women s sexuality, gender issues in the workplace, relational practice in the workplace, new models of leadership, traumatic disconnections, conflict and competition, and a relational model of self. Dr. Jordan frequently serves as a resource for the press on these issues and has appeared on the Oprah Winfrey show.Dr. Jordan believes that the existing structures of psychology characterized by a separate-self model of development are destructive to the fabric of community and misrepresent women s experience in particular. By carefully studying women s lives and women s struggles, she hopes to help create new models of human development, which might transform some of the current distorting impact of competition, hyper-individualism, racism, sexism, heterosexism, and classism. While most of her early work arose in the context of the practice of psychotherapy, Dr. Jordan is increasingly applying this work to organizations and to bringing about social change.