Dr. Joan Berzoff is Guest Speaker at the Annual Anita D. Lichtenstein Lecture!

Dr. Berzoff will be speaking on Thursday, April 5, 2018, from 7-9 pm in the Old Library on Bryn Mawr's undergraduate campus. 

This event is free and open to the public, and CEU's (Continuing Education Credits) are available! (There is a $20 processing fee). Two of Dr. Berzoff's textbooks will be available for sales and signing after the lecture. 

This talk will consider those principles from psychodynamic theories, critical race theories, and neurobiology which help us to understand with greater depth those most vulnerable and in need. The presenter will stress the need to consider the inner world, along with social and biological factors in every clinical encounter, no matter how brief or intermittent it may be. Examples from agency based practice will be used. 

As seating is limited, please RSVP. 

Dr. Joan Berzoff graduated with a BS from Washington University in St. Louis, an M.S.W from Smith and an Ed.D from Boston University.

She is a Professor Emerita at the Smith College School for Social Work where she directed the End of Life Certificate Program  for fifteen years, co-directed the Doctoral Program for thirteen years, and was Chair of Human Behavior in the Social Environment for almost twenty years. She is the author of Falling through the Cracks: Psychodynamic Practice with Vulnerable and At Risk Clients, the co-author of Inside Out and Outside In: Psychodynamic Clinical Theory and Psychopathology in Multicultural Context now in it’s fourth edition; Dissociative Identity Disordesr: Theoretical and Treatment Controversies and Living with Dying: A Handbook for End-of-Life Healthcare Practitioners. She was a finalist for the Gravida Award from the National Association for Psychoanalysis, was awarded a Soros grant from the Project on Death in America, a Charis Medal from Smith College, received the Outstanding Scholar Award from the National Academies of Practice and received the Massachusetts NASW Award for the Greatest Contribution to Teaching .

Dr. Berzoff has been a co-principal investigator on a PCORI grant in which social workers help patients and families discontinue dialysis and access palliative care when diagnoses are terminal. She has published over forty articles on women’s friendships, women’s therapy groups, homeless women’s groups, doctoral education, clinical theories and practice, language and clinical social work, women’s issues, global social work, and on traumatized social work students in students in Palestine. She has also recently co-authored a paper on the intrinsic nature of suffering.

She has given over a hundred and twenty five presentations nationally and internationally, including in Canada, Sweden, Israel, Bulgari, Hong Kong and will be teaching in Palestine. She serves on a number of editorial boards. She has been in private practice for forty years, and practices in Northampton, Mass.