Publication: Volume 1: December 2025 | Publisher: Blue Cactus Press
Practice & Politics: An Essential Reader for Social Workers and Therapists deepens practitioners’ understanding of the political dimensions of clinical care. Through critical essays and practitioner dialogues, it examines how identity, oppression, and systemic power influence therapeutic encounters. Featuring insights from queer and racialized therapists, the book invites readers to engage with the ethics and complexities…
Is it appropriate for a therapist to be politicized? Can you be anti-oppressive as a psychodynamic therapist? What are the clinical implications of working with clients who request you as a queer or racialized therapist?
Practice & Politics: An Essential Reader for Social Workers and Therapists is a conversation-in-book form that explores these questions with depth and nuance. Edited by Rahim Thawer, MSW, RSW, this collection brings together the voices of queer and racialized clinicians who examine the intersections of identity, politics, and care within the fields of psychotherapy and social work.
This first volume foregrounds the political nature of clinical and community practice. It emphasizes that therapeutic work never occurs in isolation but is continuously shaped by systems of power, privilege, and oppression, including colonial histories, racial hierarchies, capitalism, heteronormativity, and ableism. Readers are invited to reflect on how these forces influence both their clients and their own professional choices.
Through essays, case examples, and critical conversations, Practice & Politics helps practitioners develop the vocabulary and conceptual tools to identify how systemic dynamics show up in therapeutic, organizational, and community settings. It encourages readers to move away from neutral or depoliticized approaches and toward more ethically engaged, reflexive, and socially attuned practices.
Essays and Contributors Include:
• Foreword by Pratyusha Tummala-Narra, Ph.D.
• On Being a Politicized Practitioner by Rahim Thawer, MSW, RSW
• Challenging Monogamy in Relational Sex Therapy: A Social Justice Approach by Carm De Santis, LMFT
• Field Placements and Clinical Programs Must Integrate Anti-Oppressive Perspectives and Psychodynamic Theory. Here’s Why by Rahim Thawer, MSW, RSW
• Bathhouse Counselling, or the Relevance of Psychoanalytic Interventions in Clinical Social Work by Marco Posadas, PhD, RSW
• Can You Be Trauma-Informed If You’re Not Thinking About the Unconscious Processes in Your Practice? by Rahim Thawer, MSW, RSW
• The Narcissistic Abuse Industrial Complex: De-Centering Narcissism Within the Discourse on Relational Abuse and Trauma by Tanya Gaum, LMFT
Practice & Politics invites readers to see therapeutic work as both relational and political. It offers a framework for connecting individual suffering to broader structures, prompting practitioners to approach care as a form of ethical and collective action.
Who it’s for: Clinical supervisors, social-work educators, and training programs.
Publication: Volume 1: December 2025 | Publisher: Blue Cactus Press
Practice & Politics: An Essential Reader for Social Workers and Therapists deepens practitioners’ understanding of the political dimensions of clinical care. Through critical essays and practitioner dialogues, it examines how identity, oppression, and systemic power influence therapeutic encounters. Featuring insights from queer and racialized therapists, the book invites readers to engage with the ethics and complexities…
Is it appropriate for a therapist to be politicized? Can you be anti-oppressive as a psychodynamic therapist? What are the clinical implications of working with clients who request you as a queer or racialized therapist?
Practice & Politics: An Essential Reader for Social Workers and Therapists is a conversation-in-book form that explores these questions with depth and nuance. Edited by Rahim Thawer, MSW, RSW, this collection brings together the voices of queer and racialized clinicians who examine the intersections of identity, politics, and care within the fields of psychotherapy and social work.
This first volume foregrounds the political nature of clinical and community practice. It emphasizes that therapeutic work never occurs in isolation but is continuously shaped by systems of power, privilege, and oppression, including colonial histories, racial hierarchies, capitalism, heteronormativity, and ableism. Readers are invited to reflect on how these forces influence both their clients and their own professional choices.
Through essays, case examples, and critical conversations, Practice & Politics helps practitioners develop the vocabulary and conceptual tools to identify how systemic dynamics show up in therapeutic, organizational, and community settings. It encourages readers to move away from neutral or depoliticized approaches and toward more ethically engaged, reflexive, and socially attuned practices.
Essays and Contributors Include:
• Foreword by Pratyusha Tummala-Narra, Ph.D.
• On Being a Politicized Practitioner by Rahim Thawer, MSW, RSW
• Challenging Monogamy in Relational Sex Therapy: A Social Justice Approach by Carm De Santis, LMFT
• Field Placements and Clinical Programs Must Integrate Anti-Oppressive Perspectives and Psychodynamic Theory. Here’s Why by Rahim Thawer, MSW, RSW
• Bathhouse Counselling, or the Relevance of Psychoanalytic Interventions in Clinical Social Work by Marco Posadas, PhD, RSW
• Can You Be Trauma-Informed If You’re Not Thinking About the Unconscious Processes in Your Practice? by Rahim Thawer, MSW, RSW
• The Narcissistic Abuse Industrial Complex: De-Centering Narcissism Within the Discourse on Relational Abuse and Trauma by Tanya Gaum, LMFT
Practice & Politics invites readers to see therapeutic work as both relational and political. It offers a framework for connecting individual suffering to broader structures, prompting practitioners to approach care as a form of ethical and collective action.
Who it’s for: Clinical supervisors, social-work educators, and training programs.
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