Two of our founding Board members are prominent feminists whose work over decades has advanced psychotherapy and mental health treatment, substance use treatment, and sexology from a women’s perspective.
Lee Hewitt, LCSW: Bio and background
Carol Queen, Phd: Bio and background
We are committed to making space for women to feel safe to be able to engage in therapy and treatment, to address their issues where they will be heard and nurtured. Women often tell service providers that they face many major obstacles to even accessing treatment. Some women report difficulty adhering to medication, maintaining sobriety and recovery, obtaining or maintaining secure housing, employment discrimination, facing abuse, survival sex issues, and difficulty in relational dynamics. Problems might arise in therapy due to disempowering social forces; thus part of the goal of therapy is to recognize these forces and empower the client. At Emerge, we are committed to providing options to empower women in their journey toward healing.
We embrace a feminist therapeutic philosophy that focuses on cultural, societal, and political causes and solutions to issues faced in the counseling process. We openly encourage the client to participate in the world in a more social and political way. We want to ensure that women are provided tools to address a disadvantaged position in the world due to sex, gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, culture, religion, age and other categories. We work to address gender bias and stereotyping in therapy; blaming victims of physical abuse and sexual abuse; the assumption of a traditional nuclear family; and the ongoing erasure of women from the psychological discourse.