A Radical Therapy for Turbulent Times:
Social Therapeutic Clients & Practitioners Explore Building Environments for Growth

We invite you to glimpse the practice and promise of emotional development as performed on an array of social therapeutic “stages.” Join us for an uncommon conversation led by the Institute’s Social Therapy Group Study Program leaders, Rachel Mickenberg and Janet Wootten, joined by 5 creative colleagues (Jennifer Bullock, Lea Cikos, Majo Castrillo, Murray Dabby and Thecla Farrell) and 5 respective clients.

We explore how social therapeutic group-building process in its various incarnations rejects diagnostic boxes and clinical endpoints, focusing instead on the group activity of collective environment building. Learn more about this radically-relational development approach that helps people of all ages and social spaces become more grounded, relationally responsive and improvisationally creative in our turbulent and often stultifying world.

Leader Bios

Rachel Mickenberg, LCSW, is a social therapist, clinical mentor and educator. She co-founded the High School for Public Service in Brooklyn, NY and there built a youth mental health program open to all students. Currently, in her private practice, she leads groups with young people, families and adults. She is also a co-leader, with Drs. Hugh Polk and Jessie Fields of the Institute’s Creating Our Mental Health [PLEASE CHANGE THIS LINK TO GO TO THE ESI.org Initiative page - not Humanitix or the All Stars] online workshops — open, monthly conversations generating community well-being and engaging understandings of mental health, psychiatric diagnoses and emotional distress. Rachel leads the Social Therapeutic Group Study Program and participants' clinical training and supervision.

Janet Wootten, leads the study group for the Social Therapeutic Group Study Program where participants build exuberant, conceptual / methodological stages for advancing their understanding of human development. She has an M.Phil. in developmental psychology from Columbia University, where she first met and studied with Lois Holzman and, later, as a newly-minted community organizer, with Fred Newman in the early days of the New York Institute for Social Therapy and Research. A professional “appreciator,” she built a career as a PR executive, telling (and selling) stories of scientists, educators and culture-makers, and now serves as a creative associate to Lois Holzman.