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Jane Ariel, Ph.D., LMFT - Guest
Jane Ariel, PhD, LMFT is a psychologist in Oakland, California, and works with individuals, couples, and families. She has been an adjunct professor at the Wright Institute in Berkeley and has worked also with the Women’s Therapy Center and other institutions in the Bay Area. She is an active member of the American Family Therapy Academy, and works with Visions, a national organization dealing with issues of equity, inclusion, and multiculturalism. |
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W. Keith Sutton, Psy.D. - Host
Dr. Sutton has always had an interest in learning from multiple theoretical perspectives, and keeping up to date on innovations and integrations. He is interested in the development of ideas, and using research to show effectiveness in treatment and refine treatments. In 2009 he started the Institute for the Advancement of Psychotherapy, providing a one-way mirror training in family therapy with James Keim, LCSW. Next, he added a trainer and one-way mirror training in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, and an additional trainer and mirror in Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy. The participants enjoyed analyzing cases, keeping each other up to date on research, and discussing what they were learning. This focus on integrating and evolving their approaches to helping children, adolescents, families, couples, and individuals lead to the Institute for the Advancement of Psychotherapy's training program for therapists, and its group practice of like-minded clinicians who were dedicated to learning, innovating, and advancing the field of psychotherapy. Our podcast, Therapy on the Cutting Edge, is an extension of this wish to learn, integrate, stay up to date, and share this passion for the advancement of the field with other practitioners. |
Dr. Keith Sutton: (00:21)
Welcome to Therapy on the Cutting Edge, a podcast for therapists who want to be up to date on the latest advancements in the field of psychotherapy. I'm your host, Dr. Keith Sutton, a psychologist in the San Francisco Bay Area, and the Director of the Institute for the Advancement of Psychotherapy. Today I'll be speaking with Jane Ariel, PhD, LMFT, who is a psychologist in Oakland, California, and works with individuals, couples, and families. She has been an adjunct professor at the Wright Institute in Berkeley, and has also worked with the Women's Therapy Center and other institutions in the San Francisco Bay Area. She's an active member of the American Family Therapy Academy and works with Visions, a national organization dealing with the issues of equality, inclusion, and multiculturalism. Let's listen to the interview. So, hi Jane. Welcome today.
Dr. Jane Ariel: (01:11)
Nice to see you, Keith.
Dr. Keith Sutton: (01:12)
Yeah. So Jane, I know you from the American Family Therapy Academy and also the Association of Family Therapists of Northern California, which you're a part of here in the Bay Area. And particularly I know you've done a lot of work in cultural competency, multicultural work, issues of race and so on, and privilege. And so I wanted to hear more about, you know, first I want to hear about your career and how you kind of got to doing what you're doing and your evolution of your ideas. I'm always interested in kind of how people came to, to their thinking and then yeah. Hear about your work.
Dr. Jane Ariel: (01:50)
Great. So it'll be fun to talk about it. Good to talk about it.
Dr. Keith Sutton: (01:55)
Yeah.
Dr. Jane Ariel: (01:56)
So would you like me to start with my background, which I think is important actually.
Dr. Keith Sutton: (02:00)
Yes, please. Definitely.
Dr. Jane Ariel: (02:02)
So, I'm kind of, kind of saying with a smile that I grew up in Scarsdale, New York and at the time we knew it as one of the richer communities that existed in the United States. Although, I must say that our family felt like we were in the kind of lower class section of Scarsdale at this point in my life. I understand that what that felt like to me was ridiculous in terms of the way the world is today, and that we had plenty of privilege, even though my parents told me that we didn't. But I certainly understand that, and I wanna say that in my time in Scarsdale, that I don't think I ever saw a black person who wasn't in a service role of some kind, and in Scarsdale, that had nothing to do with my family,
Dr. Jane Ariel: (02:51)
There were butlers and drivers, and people came to Scarsdale High School, you know, in a car always with a black person driving, or whoever was taking care of the kids was black. So I had no notion at the beginning that, of the world out there. I lived in a completely white community and very well to do. And I also though wanna say personally that I didn't feel very comfortable in Scarsdale because I was different. We didn't have a lot of money, and, um, I was kind of a tomboy, and that was not a good thing to be in Scarsdale. I always worried about how did I look, was I being watched, et cetera. So I started my life not quite feeling as if I belonged, in this community in particular.
Dr. Keith Sutton: (03:36)
What years was that, or what kind of time period was that?
Dr. Jane Ariel: (03:38)
I graduated from high school in 1958, so that was during that time.
Dr. Keith Sutton: (03:44)
Sure. Okay.
Dr. Jane Ariel: (03:46)
I'm old at this point, but I was young then, but I knew something was wrong. And I just wasn't exactly sure what it was. And my parents were somewhat political. My mother kind of flirted a little bit with communism, but she never really did it, and my father was quite conservative. And so I didn't get much of a political education, but after I graduated, I went then to Oberlin. I was a musician at the time, actually. Um, not, that was what I was doing more than anything. I went to Oberlin in music and in English literature. And I began to realize the first job that I got out of college was, besides being a musician after I stopped, that was in Brooklyn in the poverty program. And that was really the first time that I'd lived in a multicultural society.
Dr. Jane Ariel: (04:33)
And I don't know how you were when you were young, but, when I was in Manhattan, I lived in Manhattan. I was very much part of a multicultural society there. And the program that we did in Brooklyn was to deal with folks who didn't finish high school, but most of them were African American or people of color. And we tried to get them to pass the high school equivalency exam. And that was my very first beginning. And fast forward after years of that, we had a very successful program, and it meant a great deal to me. And it meant a great deal to me to open all of my eyes to the way the world worked and what it meant to grow up black, for example, as opposed to white in Scarsdale. And I began to develop a whole sense of, this is what was most important to me in the world.
Dr. Jane Ariel: (05:18)
So, after I did that, this is not exactly in my career, I actually went to Israel and I went to Israel because of personal, not because I was very strongly Jewish or anything, but I wanted to get away from New York. I had a brother who died and I needed to get away. And in Israel, not that I meant to, I got a job. I was dealing, because of my work in Brooklyn with a poverty program, they were creating a research institute that was dealing with the educational gap between groups in Israel, the Ashkenazi Jews, the Sephardic Jews, and the Arabs to some extent the Ethiopians. And I got this job being the executive director of a research institute dealing with those issues. So it was a continuation of my sense of, that there are people in the world who come in with a lot of resources and a lot of opportunity, and plenty of people contextually who don't have that.
Dr. Jane Ariel: (06:12)
And it affects them psychologically for sure. And it affects them educationally for sure. And my whole purpose at that point, and I would say probably has remained that way, was to try and make the world a better place, trying to make it a more equal place. I stayed in Israel for many years, 13 years, and ran this research institute, and then I decided to come here. I wanted to, I had a rather administrative role there. I wanted to find my art, so to speak, and my passion. So I decided to come to the United States and get a doctorate in family therapy. At that point, I was planning to go back to Israel, but families meant a great deal to me. They still do. And in Israel, family is very significant. So I thought I'd do my doctorate here and then go back to Israel.
Dr. Jane Ariel: (06:58)
In short, I never went back to Israel because of politics, really, I have two sons, and I didn't want them to go into the Israeli army where at that point, not in the beginning, but at that point, I didn't really believe in the politics of Israel. So I stayed here, and I began to, you know, I got trained as a family therapist here, in, in the Bay Area. And I started to work. And I first joined the Women's Therapy Center, and I began to realize that the people that we were seeing at the Women's Therapy Center I was supervising were very different from the therapists who were seeing them, who were mostly all white, and also was much of a volunteer organization, had the means. Um, so it was also in class to be able to work with people, but frankly, we didn't, they didn't know how to talk to these folks.
Dr. Jane Ariel: (07:56)
So that's when I became very passionate about mixing my psychological training along with my social justice leanings. And I realized, I think, very, very quickly that all of my training, even though it was in family therapy, had not, nothing, nothing much to do with one my own biases that are within me from growing up in a privileged world. And, you know, what I was conditioned to understand, and not much at all about how do you talk to people different from you. And I guess most, one of the most important things that I became very clear about was that there was always power differentials in the room. Certainly as a therapist, we have a particular powerful role, and most people don't talk about that, I didn't learn how to talk about that for a long time. And that our differences in whatever are the isms that we encounter, have a tremendous effect.
Dr. Jane Ariel: (08:55)
So I began to think about and continue to think about that. I also started to work for visions, which is a national organization, vigorous intervision, I can't even remember the names of it, but it works with intact organizations, individuals, all different kinds of people all over this country. It's a national organization dealing with how do you really create multiculturalism in an organization or within yourself. And it was looking very clearly at what happened to, like the ceiling that happened, for example, with black women. So we would work in organizations and try and train everybody through a series of, how do you think about this? which had to do with how do you change and how do you become aware of what we called, um, you know, prejudices that came from longstanding times and what we call modern oppression, which has to do with the way that people are treated.
Dr. Jane Ariel: (09:57)
It's like, you know, as a, I always tell this story, it was with a very famous family therapist in a hotel, and he was the main speaker. And we went up to the, up to the person who was gonna tell us what to do. And that person only looked at me and only talked to me. And afterwards he and I sat, and you, you know, just kind of like, I didn't cry, but I wanted to. And he said, oh, Jane, just stop it. This is the way it is. All of the time, whenever I come into a hotel, people are looking at me suspiciously. And I just began to be more and more aware. That I, as a privileged person, more or less, every step that I take is influenced by my privilege. So that if I think, for example, that I want to go to college, I go to college. And I began to realize that there's a whole segment of the world out there that if they wanna go to college, the, um, obstacles are enormous.
Dr. Jane Ariel: (10:52)
And, um, I wanted to get involved in how do we as therapists talk across these differences, and how do we not be scared about talking about race and talking about the context in which people grew up, and that, and that's really what I've been doing for the last many, many years, is training therapists how to do that. And I have to say in terms of this interview, that, you know, even though I consider myself fairly aware, I'm always still making mistakes, as a privileged person, who doesn't have to remember my privilege all of the time. And this is something that, you know, people don't realize. And so I talk a lot about that. So in my, in my work in, in working with therapists. And also the other question is, you know, how do you not be worried
Dr. Jane Ariel: (11:46)
about talking about things like race, if you are white. And if you're living with a black person, or if you are straight and you're working with a gay person, or if you have resources and people are working class, well, how do you talk about this? When do you talk about this? And I wanna say personally, I started out thinking, oh, I know a lot about this. And I used to, every time that I started a session talk about, particularly if I was seeing an African American family or a person, I would start out saying, just know I understand about this. I want you to be able to talk about it, and please feel free anytime to correct me if I make any mistake. In other words, I started out saying I wanted to be a good white person.
Dr. Keith Sutton: (12:26)
Yes, mm-hmm.
Dr. Jane Ariel: (12:26)
And then I began to learn that it was, should be much more nuanced than that. Even though those subjects have to come out, that I wanted to really integrate it into what was going on in the therapy and wait until I had an opening that was given to me by my clients. And not just because I wanted to be a good white person, but because then it became relevant in the therapy.
Dr. Keith Sutton: (12:49)
Well, and I think that, I think that's definitely a place I know for, for me, that I'm always thinking, you know, in doing all this training and thinking about culture and kind of situating oneself and also figuring out where my client is at, and should we go into this now? Is this what they're, what's important to them in this moment? And so on. And how to acknowledge. And, and I think that even with all the training and thinking about it, it still can be awkward, and, you know, uncomfortable and, and so on. But I, I think that, you know, going into those uncomfortable spaces and just like, I think in therapy we're oftentimes figuring out, am I, am I doing this for me, or am I doing this for my client? And kind of, and I think particularly around this issue, it is a tightrope to walk to be able to kind of address issues and be present with our client while at the same time, um, yeah. Not like you're saying nonsense. I'm the good white person here, or so on.
Dr. Jane Ariel: (13:47)
So I wanted to, I mean, there's a lot of other things I wanna talk about, but I wanted to talk about, you know, and maybe you could add to this as well, Keith, that there are three things, or, and probably four or five or six that I try and keep in mind or I try and act from. One is the question of humility.
Dr. Jane Ariel: (14:05)
You know, that I personally have to remain humble. And it, what I said before is I'm always about to make mistakes, but I have to be ready to make mistakes. I have to take the risks of talking about things which are difficult, and putting myself out there in a way where I'm saying, you know, I don't know very much about this, and I'm apt to make wrong steps. And to constantly try to make myself aware of that. And I can promise you, I've been confronted sometimes by people. Like, I was in a meeting and I called, there were two African American people in the room, and I called one of them the name of the other. And, you know, thank goodness a white person said to me, Jane, you just did this. And I do wanna say to everybody who's listening to this that wasn't my worst mistake.
Dr. Jane Ariel: (14:58)
I've made many, many others. But the feeling in one's stomach, the feeling of, oh my God, what did I do? And how did I hurt this person is no fun to have. But this is where I think training is important, where we have to understand, we have to keep in the conversation. No matter what, no matter how our stomachs are feeling, no matter how much anxiety we have, that what people of color particularly are from white people, there's many other things are looking for, is somebody who's willing to really stay in the conversation and not leave.
Dr. Keith Sutton: (15:35)
Yeah. And also I think not get defensive too,
Dr. Jane Ariel: (15:38)
For sure.
Dr. Keith Sutton: (15:39)
Because I think that difference between what the intent is and what the impact is, is so important. And really taking, taking the, allowing the space to talk about or listen to what happens before jumping in and saying, oh, well that's not what I meant. Or, oh, you're taking it the wrong way. Or, or something to that effect.
Dr. Jane Ariel: (15:58)
I'm so glad you're saying that, Keith, because like in visions, we have a series of guidelines, and one of them that I find one of them that a lot of them are wonderful, but one of them that I find most important is intent versus impact. And really though, as we're dealing with that, we have to remember where we are. If we're in the powerful position, and I wanna talk a little bit about intersectionality in a minute, but if we're in a powerful position, you're so right that what we have to find out is what was the impact of what I said. And a lot of times I've certainly had it with men as a woman saying, you know, I didn't mean that at all. And yeah, that's what I meant. Don't take it that way. Rather than saying, listen, let me hear what it is that you felt when I said that. And, uh, you know, not defending myself at all after you do that, and if you're comfortable enough, which brings me to my second point, then you can have a real conversation about how you felt and whatever. But that comes much, much later. So the second point that I wanted to bring up was, in these conversations, and again, people in oppressed situations are incredibly sensitive to this, how authentic are we?
Dr. Jane Ariel: (17:11)
So the second notion after humility is authenticity. And that means that I'm willing as I'm talking to you, or I'm talking to anybody else, to really be who I am and to say what's true for me, and to be vulnerable and to say, you know, God, I made that mistake and my stomach is churning, and you know, I'm so, so sorry, and yet I did this.
Dr. Keith Sutton: (17:34)
Yeah. That transparency.
Dr. Jane Ariel: (17:36)
Transparency and however you wanna define authenticity. I think, I truly think that that's why I and other people who do good work in this area have been successful because I try and be who I am. And talk about all the aspects of it. Not just that I'm a good therapist or not, but here I am feeling very, very vulnerable. I'm making good eye contact with you. I'm listening to you, my whole body is with you. And that's the essence I think of authenticity and probably, you know, and I know that that's what makes people able to be with you in some way. And bring their own vulnerability.
Dr. Keith Sutton: (18:15)
I think that aspect of vulnerability too, as the, as a therapist or as a work colleague, or even if it's a friend or a family, whoever, it might be just that vulnerability of like, oh, like, yeah, I screwed up. Like I, and again, not, not so that the other person has to take care of you, but more just kind of being open and acknowledging your fallibility not as a reason for the other person to forgive or take care of, but just as an acknowledgement. Uh, you know, I think that that's, you know, an important piece. Cuz I think like you're saying too, that we're, and I know you've, you've mentioned intersectionality we'll get into, but I mean like right. Cuz there's so many different layers of privilege. And for me as a cisgender white male, upper middle class, you know, it's, I've got, I've got all of it. And so, you know, that there's these aspects of, you know, looking at, yeah. Both skin color, cultural background, immigrant status, sexual orientation ability, you know, gender, you know, all these kind of aspects that are at, at play. And, and so important to be kind of thinking on those multiple levels. And also even somebody who maybe doesn't have a lot of those privileges, but is a therapist, like you're saying, they have privilege by being the therapist and, and being, a person in power in that relationship.
Dr. Jane Ariel: (19:38)
Right. Uh, and as I said to you before, one of the realizations I had as a white person was, how every step that I take is influenced by my privilege. And that also brings up another question, which we haven't talked about yet. And that is, like, as a white person, white therapists dealing with white clients, to what extent does one bring up questions of racism? To what extent does one bring up context? And I think often because of our training and because certainly of psychodynamic therapy, you know, we're looking at the internal structure of things and, and believe me, I think that that's incredibly important, but I also believe that we have to constantly be aware of our privilege. And I think sometimes, I don't do this all of the time, although I think I maybe should do it more, that I wanna talk to my white clients about their privilege as well. It's a little bit difficult because it often doesn't come up. I think if we're aware of it, I once did, a session, run by a person of color with four white therapists, and really the person of color was asking us, well, when you're working with white people, do you bring up this subject? There's nothing more important to me in the world than this subject.
Dr. Jane Ariel: (21:00)
And, you know, I'd like to say yes and I believe we should, but it's, it's a tricky subject, but I think it's one that we have to keep in mind. Which brings me to the third point, which we've kind of intimated here. And that is the constant awareness of context and privilege, no matter where I am, no matter where I'm walking. And that's certainly true in the therapeutic endeavor. It has to do with the first phone call, it has to do with the first meeting. It has to be do with, you know, what do, what questions do you ask so that you learn about context so that you're not just assuming that whatever internal structures got built psychologically. And we used to think our mothers, our fathers, our families are also built very much by the context in which people grow.
Dr. Keith Sutton: (21:54)
Yes.
Dr. Jane Ariel: (21:55)
And I think that those questions, for when I'm training therapists, I'm trying to make them constantly aware, and constantly aware, of like, where their privilege is, but also what the context is that their clients grew up in. Because I think certainly psychologically, that that's one of the most important areas of a consistent, strong ego. Man, if you spend your life being looked at, like you're dangerous or whatever word you wanna say or not smart or whatever, how much it affects your sense of being. And your sense of self-esteem.
Dr. Keith Sutton: (22:34)
Well there's that, that, Cooley’s looking glass theory of self that we get our sense of self from how we are reflected in other people. And so yes, if you've got so much of society reflecting to you that you're bad or not good enough or, or not of value or, or only certain aspects of you are of value or so on, then that of course is gonna affect your sense of self. Um, and it, I I think this aspect too, like you're saying, of being aware of one's privilege, you and I have been talking recently about privilege, and particularly what I oftentimes think about is that, you know, by definition privilege means that you're kind of unaware of these things because like you're saying, walking along how every step is related to privilege. And I know at least from my experience being in, you know, various trainings and through intercultural awareness classes in grad school and, and, and the facilitated listening circles at afta that I'm just, you know, just always struck by my privilege by each, you know, thing that somebody's talking about that, you know, is oftentimes somebody that's, that's of different than I am.
Dr. Keith Sutton: (23:39)
And just, again, a lot of things that I just don't think about or see. And even with trying to bring this all the consciousness than getting caught up in life and, you know, it kind of, you know, fading to the background or those blind spots coming up. So it's, it's almost like, it's like a muscle that has to be constantly kind of worked or grown or so on, because people that don't have privilege, they can't, they don't ignore that it's with them every day, it's in their face and so on. So they're, it's not a, to forget about it is privilege.
Dr. Jane Ariel: (24:10)
Absolutely. And, and many people of color or sexual orientation or whatever, develop a kind of a second language. You know, they have their own language when they speak together, and then they've developed a second language in order to get along in the privileged world. So that brings up a couple of other things. One I wanted to say is that, you know, when I do mediations and workshops about this, I kind of, I don't always say it, but I feel it. I wouldn't wanna be a white cisgendered male. Middle upper class. I just wouldn't wanna be then, because, you know, everybody's looking, since you've defined yourself that way, everybody's looking at you well, you know, like get it together or whatever. So-
Dr. Keith Sutton: (24:53)
I'm like literally the man.
Dr. Jane Ariel: (24:54)
Yeah. And literally, and you know, it takes a lot of strength and I appreciate this interview, Keith. Also, it takes a lot of strength to say, you know, I am this and I have all this privilege, but I'm willing to look at. I'm willing to be it. Which brings up another question, both in therapy, but also, around all of the area of multiculturalism. And that is being able to accept people where they are in this journey. And I, you know, I say those words as if it's easy. It isn't easy to do. And yet I think it's incredibly important, because they're, you can have a group of people or a client or anybody who's at a very different place in their journey. And the real question then is how do you accept them?
Dr. Jane Ariel: (25:45)
And how to communicate with them that, for example, you as a cisgendered man wouldn't feel that I'm thinking like, oh, well, you know, like you're, whatever. I want you to think when I'm talking to you that I care deeply about where you are in your journey and that you've been conditioned like everybody else. And I wanna be receptive to that. I always haven't been successful at it, because I have some judgments. We have to watch our judgments and they're, and they're subtle. We talk about the word of implicit bias. So, you know, I could easily have, I, as even as a facilitator, could have implicit bias towards you. And I don't wanna have that. I wanna really see you as you are, and I wanna see everybody else in the room as they are. And some people are pretty far along the journey. They can talk about it in a way they're not scared of it, and other people are like, I really wanna change. But I dunno how.
Dr. Keith Sutton: (26:40)
What comes to mind is the term appreciative ally, Bill Matson's term from the collaborative therapy with multi-stress families. And that I've always kind of been struck by that. I mean, I am, you know, got into the field, you know, doing some training, motivational interviewing, and then being more interested in more of the post-modern approaches such as narrative therapy and solution focused therapy its real focus of being more transparent. One down collaborating and partnering with our clients rather than being the expert and kind of more of a top down approach. But that aspect of the appreciative ally of one kind of meeting the person where they're at, and also having that positive perspective to see the world through the client's eyes. Because, you know, no one is usually the villain in their own story. Like they're, the person is doing the things they're doing cuz it makes sense to them. And if we can understand that and validate that and meet them, and the client feels understood, and I feel like I understand the client, then we're kind of together and then we can potentially move forward, but if I don't get that of why it makes sense, like you're saying, meeting them where they're at and accepting that, then it's hard for us to, to go in any direction from there. We don't start with that.
Dr. Jane Ariel: (27:57)
Right. Well, thank you for saying that. I think it's important. I do wanna talk, I wanna make one point too, and you and I have talked about this a little bit, that it's also very important as far as I'm concerned to work, if you're a white person to work with white people, so that you have the opportunity working with white people to one, allow them to be vulnerable. They're not, they're in in a homogeneous group of some kind. I mean, the purpose is always to be able to talk across difference. But when you're in a white group, you're not asking people of color to teach you. You're really trying to learn what you can together. And there's a lot of experiences and vulnerabilities that people don't talk about. And I like to do white groups because I think that there's an opportunity to do that, although it's often hard.
Dr. Jane Ariel: (28:50)
You know, white people often aren't so much in touch with their feelings. I don't wanna make a generalization. Also, they have different cultures and different experiences, but it's often hard to get a white group to go deeper into these kind of hidden issues for which we've been conditioned forever. You know, we'll say, well, I'm not a racist and I can say I'm not a racist, but I am. You know, there's just ways that I am. So I think that it, it's, it's said in the world of multiculturalism that you definitely don't want, when you're in the position of a privilege, to ask people who aren't to teach you about it.
Dr. Keith Sutton: (29:24)
Yes, yes. Yeah.
Dr. Jane Ariel: (29:25)
But the main way is not to do that, is to make sure that you also participate in groups that are homogeneous in your kind of privilege.
Dr. Keith Sutton: (29:34)
Yes.
Dr. Jane Ariel: (29:34)
So I just want, wanna make that point.
Dr. Keith Sutton: (29:36)
Well, I think that's, there's two things that come up for me. And, and as you say that, I don't know if you've seen, there was a video I saw in grad school in intercultural awareness where I think it was a group of men that all came together and they were going around introducing themselves. It was a mixed race group. And one of the men introduced himself and he said, it was a white man. He said, I'm a racist. And I know that everybody was like, oh my gosh. And part what he was saying is, I'm a racist. I have thoughts of stereotypes and and so on. And this is part of me. Although again, he was, you know, uh, yeah, he was an ally. But at the same time, kind of acknowledging that there are these mental heuristics that there has been this experience of, you know, stereotypes that sink in from culture and from the larger society and so on, that that each person may hold and have, you know, reactions to, and again, being aware of those, those pieces being.
Dr. Jane Ariel: (30:28)
And that reminds me of my association as to this, that for the longest time, that's not been true in the last 10 years or so, I didn't want to use the word white supremacy. You know, I felt like if I said you're a white supremacist, or even brought up the word that there would be a lot of defensiveness and resistance to it, and it wasn't in the vocabulary. Then, now, it is in the vocabulary. Thank goodness that it's in the vocabulary because it's talking about the whole way this country was created. And, um, you know, that's a much longer discussion that we have, but you know, what's going on politically today is wild. I mean, it's pretty wild.
Dr. Keith Sutton: (31:09)
Yeah. Yeah.
Dr. Jane Ariel: (31:10)
Even for example, the Texas ban on abortion, I'm not talking about voter suppression. The Texas ban on abortion, it's, it's like who's in control of whose bodies. And then people, you know, now they're making it possible. I don't know if you've been reading about it, but they're making it possible for any person in the country to be able to sue you, if they think that you were part of trying to help somebody get an abortion. This is a ludicrous law. So that if I know that your sister took your wife to have an abortion, I don't think you, excuse me, the hypothetical that I can sue your sister, I as a citizen.
Dr. Jane Ariel: (31:53)
Now, I think what we're seeing there is white supremacy and it’s in its naked clothes, you know, like, and all of the men voting men, I mean, there's some women, but mostly there's men voting to do this in control of the body. I don't know why I was thinking of it today, but we didn't talk about it, but I guess we will. Critical race theory, which is coming up now. I don't know how much you've been paying attention to it, but, well, there's now a law in Texas, and it's, and it's going all over the country, that you cannot teach critical race theory. Now, one of the problems is that there's the definition of critical race theory is complex. But what they're, what they're talking about is that I don't want my white child to feel guilty. So you can't talk about slavery.
Dr. Jane Ariel: (32:41)
Yes. You can't talk, you can't make my child feel. So we're for forbidding the teaching of race theory, which is ludicrous. I mean, what we do in our training, what we do all over, and again, punishable like by a felon almost if you do this in school in certain places. That's not entirely true. But in my organization Visions, when this came out, we just said what, because the nature of what we do is all about trying to let people know the history. Trying to let people understand, as we just talked about what white supremacy means.
Dr. Jane Ariel: (33:20)
And do we bring this up in therapy? It's a good question. I will bring it up in therapy if something comes up. I'm not scared anymore. I used to be scared about that. So, I just wanted to bring that up as an adjunct to what you're saying also about this man who was able to say, I'm racist.
Dr. Keith Sutton: (33:38)
Yeah. Well, I think that's something that's so important too, is, you know, I was talking with a colleague of mine the other day, as I'm wanting to do more work and kind of thinking about kind of a path to, you know, more work around privilege and so on. And she's a African-American woman, and I was talking about, you know, a lot of my clients are white and, and so on. And I don't know if that's, maybe because, you know, my picture's on the website, a white name, uh, a a lot of my clients are coming to me for that reason. Or if there's things that I have on my website or could on my website that would make other people of different, you know, races. So on that, that more, uh, you know, feeling like I'm an ally that they could come and see or so on.
Dr. Keith Sutton: (34:21)
I mean, I have, again, a large, some, you know, clients of various culture and gender and so on, but, but more majority way. And she was saying, well, you know, the most of my clients are black. They're coming to me as a black therapist and so on. So she's saying, I don't think that's, that's especially in private practice, that that's, you know, too abnormal. And I think that sometimes as a white therapist, sometimes I see like the conference, you know, for our organization being on, Latina families and I'm like, oh, that's interesting. But I'm, you know, I'm not, I maybe have one client, you know, that I'm working with in that. And so sometimes it kind of feels like, oh, well, you know, that's a larger kind of intellectual issue, but not as much kind of for my own clients.
Dr. Keith Sutton: (35:01)
And then when I go, you know, again, it just, I, I think doing this again, just, it's not necessarily just about learning about this other culture, but again, it's about raising my consciousness of privilege and how that applies in my sessions with my clients. And again, even if I'm working with other white clients or so on, again, the intersectionality around gender, around race, socioeconomic status, you know, complex trauma history, you know, it's privileged to not grow up in trauma, and so on. And kind of looking at that and with, with clients who have had that experience and so on and, and working with couples where one hasn't had that experience. So yeah, I just think that's kind of important. Cause I think sometimes some therapists can think like, oh, well that's, that multicultural stuff is intellectually interesting, but it doesn't necessarily apply to my practice.
Dr. Jane Ariel: (35:49)
And oftentimes when you're training people and you spend time on social justice work or multicultural work, people say, well, oh wait, that's not what I came here for. I came here to learn therapy. And even in the organization, which we both belong to, there was a question for a long time about the dichotomy between social justice, which many times people accuse us of older white therapists and particularly often men accuse us of, um, were, uh, I just because of the phone, I just lost my, uh, train of thought.
Dr. Keith Sutton: (36:25)
Sometimes, yeah. Um, uh, people are coming to learn therapy instead of social justice, and then other people are accusing you.
Dr. Jane Ariel: (36:33)
Right. And, and what I always say, and what I totally believe is that social justice and therapy are not two separate issues. Social justice and therapy are integrated. And again, what we were talking about before, if you can't bring the contextual nature of people's life, particularly around privileged and oppression into the therapeutic endeavor, then I think you're missing something very, very important. It used to made me, make me mad that people wanted to make a distinction between those two things. So they seem so completely in connected intellectually. No, they wanted to bring that up as an important, important point. Which again, you know, I'm gonna say this also, the younger generation is changing when you now train younger therapists, they have had, and particularly in the Bay Area, I don't think this is true all over, but they've had a fair amount of knowledge about social justice.
Dr. Jane Ariel: (37:28)
They've had a course in high school, they did have a course in their, and I do believe that that, that they live again here, a more integrated life than ever before. So in a certain way, we might have to change some of our ways of teaching because people's experiences are quite different. And, you know, racial identification might not be the most important thing to teach right now. But I don't think theoretically we've come up with too much of new ways of thinking about that. But it, it brings me also to a question, Keith, that I don't wanna forget. And that is a question of intersectionality. Because you, you know, I can say for myself as a person, I think of myself as a privileged person. But in fact, I have areas of my life which are not at all privileged, and I have to be aware of them and I have to be able to work with them as well.
Dr. Jane Ariel: (38:27)
I'm a woman, so I have, what, what do I feel, for example, when I'm working with a man and am I comfortable confronting the man around his sexism? Cause I'm not in the powerful position, it's interesting. I had to learn that I felt more comfortable confronting people around racism where I was in a privileged position than I did confronting people when I was in a non-privileged position. Which of course makes sense in that, you know, one self-esteem is involved in all of that. And you know, in a way, like I was saying, that there has to be dual languages for people who are oppressed to be able to deal with the privileged world that they live in. But also when you are, you know, in an oppressed position, do you have the strength and do you have the courage to confront somebody? I think sexism is an easier one for me. I've been around it for a long, long time. There's been a lot of work done, women's movements has happened. So I don't have much trouble saying to a man, you know, you're acting like a sexist. He may not like to stay in therapy with you, or if you do it in a good way, he actually might be thrilled that you were helping him.
Dr. Keith Sutton: (39:35)
Yeah.
Dr. Jane Ariel: (39:35)
I understand that.
Dr. Keith Sutton: (39:36)
Well, yeah. And I also think too, and again, cuz I, because I hold so many privileges, you know, I oftentimes in, in addressing some of those things, kind of being able to use the curiosity and kind of, you know, being curious as I'm wondering about what you're saying, whether that's affected by gender norms or oppressive dominant stereotypes, you know, and kind of being able to open up that, that aspect of kind of the influence on the person, which sometimes can help feel a little less compensative because it's kind of, you know, it, it's postulating that their thinking is influenced by larger kind of cultural messages that they're getting. Um, and, and that that's kind of had this interplay versus kind of them being the whole owner of kind of aspect, I guess. If that makes sense. To kind of help look at that and externalize that.
Dr. Jane Ariel: (40:35)
Yeah. Yeah. With intersectionality, we also have to know, have to be conscious of, like, for example, as a woman, am I being careful not to act like a victim in some way? You know, am I being careful that I have enough strength to be able to still maintain my own being, even when I'm confronted with, you know, oppression in the world that's around gayness, it's around being a woman. It's about somewhat being a Jew, although not always. And one that does, it certainly does help one, understand the positions where, where you’re not, when you're privileged and you can begin to understand better. But it's also your own development, which I wanna bring up another subject as well. I don't know how where you are of, uh, in, after the organization, there was a group of us, I wasn't so central in it, but I participated in, I went to Kosovo.
Dr. Jane Ariel: (41:40)
We went to Kosovo in order to try and as, as family therapists, and it was sponsored in a way by af although the money didn't come from afta, and we were working with families who would just seen incredible violence. Particularly families who had watched their men being shot, which happened in a lot of places. And those are the families that we were working with. And I began to think about, um, I began to think of how do I listen to these people? How do I really open myself? So I created in my mind something called open listening. And the reason that I want, you know, it's not new to me. God knows. There's plenty of people who have worked around, how do you talk across difference, but what I thought that meant to me was how do I manage to keep my own identity.
Dr. Jane Ariel: (42:32)
Like, be aware of my culture, be aware of my biases, be aware of my privilege, stay steady internally while I'm listening to the story of somebody else. And it's a, there's a tension, there's a dynamic tension between maintaining your own sense of self, while still being completely open to listening to somebody else, not only their problems. But also understanding the context in which they grew up. And one of the ways that we dealt with that in Kosovo, which I thought was very interesting, was we never gave a lecture as a single person from America. We always gave a lecture in combination with a kosovar.
Dr. Jane Ariel: (43:15)
And what was particularly interesting, just as a detail, was when the Kosovar spoke in Albanian, then, then we got to hear the translation. And that gave you an extra moment to try and become as aware as you could of what you might say that might run contrary to the culture. In Kosovo. And, um, it was a, it was an incredible experience. And that way I learned, I'm hoping I gave something, but I think that I learned a tremendous amount about that. So I never wrote a paper about it, but I think it's incredibly important, um, to keep one sense of self. Whenever we're listening.
Dr. Keith Sutton: (43:55)
Can you say, and, and has juxtaposed against the opposite of not keeping oneself and and what does that look like?
Dr. Jane Ariel: (44:02)
Well, that's an, I think that, that's an interesting question, Keith. Like actually one of our after just wrote an article about empathy. So the, how do you stay empathic without losing yourself? And what does that mean is your question, what does that mean, losing yourself? Well, I can get so involved in somebody else's reality that I lose my own power to maintain my capacity to observe.
Dr. Keith Sutton: (44:27)
Sure.
Dr. Jane Ariel: (44:28)
To maintain my capacity to make an intervention, which is really based on what the client is saying, but also, if I'm scared or whatever, that I hold steady in my own sense of self. Yes. And, and I, you know, that, that, it's a complicated question. How you do that. You keep an integrated ego in some way. You keep a sense that of grounding, you breathe, you remember your feet are on the floor, and you don't let yourself be taken over completely by the story that somebody else is taking.
Dr. Keith Sutton: (45:02)
I think, tell me if I'm understanding this right. You know, when I think about that, I think about, I oftentimes show a clip from Brene Brown on empathy. There's a little cartoon of like a bear going down into a, a hole with someone. And I share this to a lot of my clients and in teaching. And one of the points that it's making is to be truly empathic. We have to connect with that part of ourselves that is felt that same feeling. And sometimes she talks about empathy versus sympathy. That sometimes somebody is either not willing to connect with that and they say, oh, well, you know, don't worry, like Janie's doing good in school even though Bobby's not, or you know, oh, don't worry about that miscarriage. At least you know you can get pregnant. So I'm like, like kind of a dismissal of it.
Dr. Keith Sutton: (45:43)
Cuz sometimes either they're not willing to make contact with that, or the opposite they get, they get so dysregulated by feeling that, feeling that of, you know, kind of connecting with that emotion that they're not able to still be present for the other. And so they try to fix it or they get caught up in their own experience and kind of move away from connecting. And so I don't know if that's kind of similar to it, like kind of a keeping grounded and connecting with the person while not getting overly dysregulated to fix it or to, you know, kind of lose oneself, but kind of that aspect.
Dr. Jane Ariel: (46:21)
Well, I don't know, there's some discrepancy or a tension in what you're saying because I, I don't know how you, how you would talk about this, but like, if I'm listening to somebody's story and the way that I hear it best is if it connects to something in me, I think that that's not accurate. I think that we have to be open to the story, but I'm not sure that we have to refer to ourselves about it. Now, I want, this brings up, one of this brings up the question of authenticity that we were talking about, and I think we haven't talked much about feeling and it's difficult for people in privilege often to access their feelings. So I think when you're listening to somebody else, are you a person who can access your feelings? Not necessarily the same experience.
Dr. Keith Sutton: (47:10)
Yes. Yes, exactly.
Dr. Jane Ariel: (47:11)
Right. And then can you express your feelings to that person, which is part of humility, part part of authenticity, part of being aware of context, part of letting go of protections of oneself and of, of course, we haven't talked about feelings, but the, let me just say one of the things oftentimes, you know, when I do white groups and then people of color are doing groups, a lot of the white groups saying, oh, they're laughing and they're saying a lot of things. I wanna be in their group. I don't wanna be in my group because we're too constricted in a certain way. So the capacity to be in touch deeply with feelings, with laughter, with humor, with all of those things which lighten up, the connection I think is very, very important. And it's part of empathy.
Dr. Keith Sutton: (48:01)
Definitely. Well, and the, when I think of empathy, I worked at a program when I was in undergrad and I was working, helping some kids with tutoring after school. And many of them were gang involved. And I was talking to the director and I said, how may, to help these kids, I've never been in a gang, or I've, I haven't had that experience. And he said, but, but you've had the experience of maybe feeling alone. You've had a moment of feeling unsafe. And by connecting with what that feels like or particularly, you know, I was at a Black Lives Matter rally and hearing somebody that was speaking and I was just connecting with what it feels like to be helpless. And then kind of that, that small bit and then kind of expanding that to imagine what this person's life must be like as they were talking about these, in the experiences of injustice that, again, I don't experience it all, but I could imagine even just a moment of that helplessness.
Dr. Keith Sutton: (48:59)
And then it's kind of like looking at that exponentially. Um, that's kind of that the way I think about. But I, again, I think sometimes when somebody connects with that, it becomes overwhelming and they wanna say, oh, but things are getting better or this or that. And they, they kind of wanna make it better to not feel that feeling, rather than really staying with the emotion of the other person and resonating with them. Cuz yeah, and that Rene Brown one, she says that she talks about empathy is feeling with someone and that kind.
Dr. Jane Ariel: (49:27)
I like that very much the way that you're talking about that. I think it's very important. I think I, I think in general, one of the, one of the issues with privilege and those people, those of us who have walked around in the world thinking, well, I can do whatever I want in some way, and I have the right to do, I deserve to do whatever I want. That it also shuts off often something not always, but often does. And it's, that's something that it shuts off that I think you're talking about, and I'm talking about that brings us into authentic connection with people no matter who they are.
Dr. Keith Sutton: (50:04)
Yeah.
Dr. Jane Ariel: (50:05)
And, um, I think nothing could be more important. And it, it's very hard to know how to train for that, you know?
Dr. Keith Sutton: (50:10)
Yeah, yeah. Definitely. I mean, I think that, yeah, that, that aspect of the open listening, I mean, you know, I always kind of go back to like motivational interviewing and the, you know, those, those kind of more humanistic aspects because really the, I do trainings for folks in this and that, you know, know really the, the foundation is what they call the spirit of motivational interviewing, but it's essentially having a profound respect and value of the other person. And if that person is not going to make the change or doing heroin or so on, that's their choice. And as a therapist, we need to respect that and value that and, and know that we may not know what's the right thing for that person, but only with that kind of separateness and connection that can we make change, if we're just trying to use a technique to get the person to do what we think is best for them, then that's problematic. And, and, um, so it's-
Dr. Jane Ariel: (51:03)
That brings up humility.
Dr. Keith Sutton: (51:04)
Exactly. Yeah. Yeah.
Dr. Jane Ariel: (51:06)
I wanted to say one thing. I was thinking like, if you asked me the question, which you didn't, you know, if I'm thinking of my identity in the world and my identity as a person who's involved in social justice, that I was thinking of what I might say to you if you ask that question. And I think it is walking out on the street and being at home or any conversation that I retain my capacity to constantly be aware of the differences in power between me and anybody. I might be on the downside of power. And I wanna be able to respond well to that with certain kind of inner strength. But I also can often be on the upside of power. And I wanna just be aware that the experience of anybody who's interacting with me, they're having many, many different experiences of what it means to react to somebody, you know, to interact with somebody in power.
Dr. Jane Ariel: (52:02)
So it, it's that constant awareness. It’s tiring actually. And it's, and and of course, like we said before, I don't do it perfectly because I still, you know, I'm pretty old, but I'm conditioned in a very, very strong way. I was, I was thinking about critical race theory because I was thinking about Native Americans, I'm thinking of Native Americans going to school and somebody says, no, we can't teach about what we did to your, to your world, and that you're living, I, I would suspect that if you asked a fifth grader today Oh, where, wait, do Native Americans live? They would have no idea that most of them live on reservations. Or, or how many people of them do live on reservations or that we took them all of their children away from school and
Dr. Keith Sutton: (52:49)
Yeah. What, what happened after, uh, Columbus landed?
Dr. Jane Ariel: (52:52)
Yeah. Yeah. And that, we have to keep learning that and keep teaching it and keep walking with it.
Dr. Keith Sutton: (53:01)
And some of that, I didn't even really learn until, you know, grad school and coming to the Bay Area and learning about Japanese internment camps or you know, the kind of the, you know, and, and really engaging with some of the history here, which, you know, growing up in, on the East coast and going to, you know, college in Colorado, it wasn't really until coming here and really a lot of the focus on kind of the, the, the true histories of, of different, you know, groups within America, you know, was I even aware because that stuff just wasn't taught or wasn't, you know, at the forefront.
Dr. Jane Ariel: (53:34)
Right. Well, that brings us back also to the larger question, which I think is very interesting. And I I don't think it's well yet taught, and that is, what do you do in a therapy session? How do you talk about these things? When do you talk about these things? How do you, how are you constantly where, for example, as a therapist, what does it mean to that particular person in that particular culture, in that particular context? What does it mean to be talking to you? Because even in the essence of therapy, very often when you're talking about across difference, you know, it's not part of the culture. It's not part of what you think that we do, which reminds me that we didn't talk about spirituality either. And spirituality often when you're talking across difference.
Dr. Jane Ariel: (54:22)
And if you're not a, if you're not a particularly religious person or a spiritual person as a therapist, you may miss that one of the most important things might be for the clients that you're working with might be spirituality. So, again, it's an exploration of places where you, that's not where you are, but you're able and open to having those conversations across difference.. Which in the end is what I'm, as far as I'm concerned, social justice is about creating equality. And social justice is also as therapists being able to talk about these things and believing that talking about them is important.
Dr. Keith Sutton: (54:59)
Definitely. And I think that aspect too, you know, I always kind of, when I'm supervising too, is that when you have that moment of thinking like, oh, why isn't this going right? Or why isn't that person talking to their boss? Or why aren't they, you know, deciding to yeah, apply to that college or something that, again, when we think something's not going the way it should, that's our cue to kind of step back and be curious and kind of check that out, our own kind of beliefs and so on, and seeing if that's a different experience for the person. And oftentimes that's when it does come outta persons, like actually in my, and again, whether they, I think that even transcends culture and so on and, and you know, religion, but it, but also, especially with these differences that might be culturally induced with, that person's experience. Cuz otherwise we can press forward with our beliefs of what we think is right or so on. Um, but that may, you know, be, again, stepping on somebody else's experience and they may not feel powerful enough, or enough power to be able to speak up about that. So it's more on the on us of the one in power to be aware and be checking in and situating oneself and being curious.
Dr. Jane Ariel: (56:03)
Absolutely. I realize that we're coming to the end of our, I'm wondering if you had any last question that you wanted to ask me, or have we covered most of what we needed to?
Dr. Keith Sutton: (56:13)
I, you know, I think we covered so much and so such, uh, a lot of really great stuff. And I think, you know, again, this aspect I think of privilege and particularly, you know, as white therapists and we have our, you know, intersectionalities, but I think this, this aspect, like you're talking about, about, you know, this importance of the authenticity, about the open listening, the, you know, awareness of context for privilege and humility and really trying to bring and raise our consciousness around privilege because like you're saying, it's with every step. So I really appreciate the time and I really, uh, always enjoy talking with you, Jane. It's great.
Dr. Jane Ariel: (56:50)
It's been a pleasure talking with you, Keith. We could be on the Rachel Maddow show when she says thank you for taking your time. And you say Pleasure to be with you,
Dr. Keith Sutton: (57:00)
That's right. Exactly. Well, thanks so much. I appreciate it. Take care.
Dr. Jane Ariel: (57:05)
Okay.
Dr. Keith Sutton: (57:06)
Bye-bye.
Dr. Jane Ariel: (57:07)
Bye.
Dr. Keith Sutton: (57:09)
Thank you for joining us. If you're wanting to use this podcast or continuing education credits, please go to our website at therapy on the cutting edge.com. Our podcast is brought to you by the Institute for the Advancement of Psychotherapy, providing in-person and remote therapy in the San Francisco Bay area. IAP provides training for licensed clinicians through our in-person and online programs, as well as our treatment for children, adolescents, families, couples, and individual adults. For more information, go to SfIAP.com or call (415)6175932. Also, we really appreciate feedback and if you have something you're interested in, something that's on the cutting edge of the field of therapy and think clinicians should know about it, send us an email or call us. We're always looking for the advancements in the field of psychotherapy to help in creating lasting changes for our clients.
Welcome to Therapy on the Cutting Edge, a podcast for therapists who want to be up to date on the latest advancements in the field of psychotherapy. I'm your host, Dr. Keith Sutton, a psychologist in the San Francisco Bay Area, and the Director of the Institute for the Advancement of Psychotherapy. Today I'll be speaking with Jane Ariel, PhD, LMFT, who is a psychologist in Oakland, California, and works with individuals, couples, and families. She has been an adjunct professor at the Wright Institute in Berkeley, and has also worked with the Women's Therapy Center and other institutions in the San Francisco Bay Area. She's an active member of the American Family Therapy Academy and works with Visions, a national organization dealing with the issues of equality, inclusion, and multiculturalism. Let's listen to the interview. So, hi Jane. Welcome today.
Dr. Jane Ariel: (01:11)
Nice to see you, Keith.
Dr. Keith Sutton: (01:12)
Yeah. So Jane, I know you from the American Family Therapy Academy and also the Association of Family Therapists of Northern California, which you're a part of here in the Bay Area. And particularly I know you've done a lot of work in cultural competency, multicultural work, issues of race and so on, and privilege. And so I wanted to hear more about, you know, first I want to hear about your career and how you kind of got to doing what you're doing and your evolution of your ideas. I'm always interested in kind of how people came to, to their thinking and then yeah. Hear about your work.
Dr. Jane Ariel: (01:50)
Great. So it'll be fun to talk about it. Good to talk about it.
Dr. Keith Sutton: (01:55)
Yeah.
Dr. Jane Ariel: (01:56)
So would you like me to start with my background, which I think is important actually.
Dr. Keith Sutton: (02:00)
Yes, please. Definitely.
Dr. Jane Ariel: (02:02)
So, I'm kind of, kind of saying with a smile that I grew up in Scarsdale, New York and at the time we knew it as one of the richer communities that existed in the United States. Although, I must say that our family felt like we were in the kind of lower class section of Scarsdale at this point in my life. I understand that what that felt like to me was ridiculous in terms of the way the world is today, and that we had plenty of privilege, even though my parents told me that we didn't. But I certainly understand that, and I wanna say that in my time in Scarsdale, that I don't think I ever saw a black person who wasn't in a service role of some kind, and in Scarsdale, that had nothing to do with my family,
Dr. Jane Ariel: (02:51)
There were butlers and drivers, and people came to Scarsdale High School, you know, in a car always with a black person driving, or whoever was taking care of the kids was black. So I had no notion at the beginning that, of the world out there. I lived in a completely white community and very well to do. And I also though wanna say personally that I didn't feel very comfortable in Scarsdale because I was different. We didn't have a lot of money, and, um, I was kind of a tomboy, and that was not a good thing to be in Scarsdale. I always worried about how did I look, was I being watched, et cetera. So I started my life not quite feeling as if I belonged, in this community in particular.
Dr. Keith Sutton: (03:36)
What years was that, or what kind of time period was that?
Dr. Jane Ariel: (03:38)
I graduated from high school in 1958, so that was during that time.
Dr. Keith Sutton: (03:44)
Sure. Okay.
Dr. Jane Ariel: (03:46)
I'm old at this point, but I was young then, but I knew something was wrong. And I just wasn't exactly sure what it was. And my parents were somewhat political. My mother kind of flirted a little bit with communism, but she never really did it, and my father was quite conservative. And so I didn't get much of a political education, but after I graduated, I went then to Oberlin. I was a musician at the time, actually. Um, not, that was what I was doing more than anything. I went to Oberlin in music and in English literature. And I began to realize the first job that I got out of college was, besides being a musician after I stopped, that was in Brooklyn in the poverty program. And that was really the first time that I'd lived in a multicultural society.
Dr. Jane Ariel: (04:33)
And I don't know how you were when you were young, but, when I was in Manhattan, I lived in Manhattan. I was very much part of a multicultural society there. And the program that we did in Brooklyn was to deal with folks who didn't finish high school, but most of them were African American or people of color. And we tried to get them to pass the high school equivalency exam. And that was my very first beginning. And fast forward after years of that, we had a very successful program, and it meant a great deal to me. And it meant a great deal to me to open all of my eyes to the way the world worked and what it meant to grow up black, for example, as opposed to white in Scarsdale. And I began to develop a whole sense of, this is what was most important to me in the world.
Dr. Jane Ariel: (05:18)
So, after I did that, this is not exactly in my career, I actually went to Israel and I went to Israel because of personal, not because I was very strongly Jewish or anything, but I wanted to get away from New York. I had a brother who died and I needed to get away. And in Israel, not that I meant to, I got a job. I was dealing, because of my work in Brooklyn with a poverty program, they were creating a research institute that was dealing with the educational gap between groups in Israel, the Ashkenazi Jews, the Sephardic Jews, and the Arabs to some extent the Ethiopians. And I got this job being the executive director of a research institute dealing with those issues. So it was a continuation of my sense of, that there are people in the world who come in with a lot of resources and a lot of opportunity, and plenty of people contextually who don't have that.
Dr. Jane Ariel: (06:12)
And it affects them psychologically for sure. And it affects them educationally for sure. And my whole purpose at that point, and I would say probably has remained that way, was to try and make the world a better place, trying to make it a more equal place. I stayed in Israel for many years, 13 years, and ran this research institute, and then I decided to come here. I wanted to, I had a rather administrative role there. I wanted to find my art, so to speak, and my passion. So I decided to come to the United States and get a doctorate in family therapy. At that point, I was planning to go back to Israel, but families meant a great deal to me. They still do. And in Israel, family is very significant. So I thought I'd do my doctorate here and then go back to Israel.
Dr. Jane Ariel: (06:58)
In short, I never went back to Israel because of politics, really, I have two sons, and I didn't want them to go into the Israeli army where at that point, not in the beginning, but at that point, I didn't really believe in the politics of Israel. So I stayed here, and I began to, you know, I got trained as a family therapist here, in, in the Bay Area. And I started to work. And I first joined the Women's Therapy Center, and I began to realize that the people that we were seeing at the Women's Therapy Center I was supervising were very different from the therapists who were seeing them, who were mostly all white, and also was much of a volunteer organization, had the means. Um, so it was also in class to be able to work with people, but frankly, we didn't, they didn't know how to talk to these folks.
Dr. Jane Ariel: (07:56)
So that's when I became very passionate about mixing my psychological training along with my social justice leanings. And I realized, I think, very, very quickly that all of my training, even though it was in family therapy, had not, nothing, nothing much to do with one my own biases that are within me from growing up in a privileged world. And, you know, what I was conditioned to understand, and not much at all about how do you talk to people different from you. And I guess most, one of the most important things that I became very clear about was that there was always power differentials in the room. Certainly as a therapist, we have a particular powerful role, and most people don't talk about that, I didn't learn how to talk about that for a long time. And that our differences in whatever are the isms that we encounter, have a tremendous effect.
Dr. Jane Ariel: (08:55)
So I began to think about and continue to think about that. I also started to work for visions, which is a national organization, vigorous intervision, I can't even remember the names of it, but it works with intact organizations, individuals, all different kinds of people all over this country. It's a national organization dealing with how do you really create multiculturalism in an organization or within yourself. And it was looking very clearly at what happened to, like the ceiling that happened, for example, with black women. So we would work in organizations and try and train everybody through a series of, how do you think about this? which had to do with how do you change and how do you become aware of what we called, um, you know, prejudices that came from longstanding times and what we call modern oppression, which has to do with the way that people are treated.
Dr. Jane Ariel: (09:57)
It's like, you know, as a, I always tell this story, it was with a very famous family therapist in a hotel, and he was the main speaker. And we went up to the, up to the person who was gonna tell us what to do. And that person only looked at me and only talked to me. And afterwards he and I sat, and you, you know, just kind of like, I didn't cry, but I wanted to. And he said, oh, Jane, just stop it. This is the way it is. All of the time, whenever I come into a hotel, people are looking at me suspiciously. And I just began to be more and more aware. That I, as a privileged person, more or less, every step that I take is influenced by my privilege. So that if I think, for example, that I want to go to college, I go to college. And I began to realize that there's a whole segment of the world out there that if they wanna go to college, the, um, obstacles are enormous.
Dr. Jane Ariel: (10:52)
And, um, I wanted to get involved in how do we as therapists talk across these differences, and how do we not be scared about talking about race and talking about the context in which people grew up, and that, and that's really what I've been doing for the last many, many years, is training therapists how to do that. And I have to say in terms of this interview, that, you know, even though I consider myself fairly aware, I'm always still making mistakes, as a privileged person, who doesn't have to remember my privilege all of the time. And this is something that, you know, people don't realize. And so I talk a lot about that. So in my, in my work in, in working with therapists. And also the other question is, you know, how do you not be worried
Dr. Jane Ariel: (11:46)
about talking about things like race, if you are white. And if you're living with a black person, or if you are straight and you're working with a gay person, or if you have resources and people are working class, well, how do you talk about this? When do you talk about this? And I wanna say personally, I started out thinking, oh, I know a lot about this. And I used to, every time that I started a session talk about, particularly if I was seeing an African American family or a person, I would start out saying, just know I understand about this. I want you to be able to talk about it, and please feel free anytime to correct me if I make any mistake. In other words, I started out saying I wanted to be a good white person.
Dr. Keith Sutton: (12:26)
Yes, mm-hmm.
Dr. Jane Ariel: (12:26)
And then I began to learn that it was, should be much more nuanced than that. Even though those subjects have to come out, that I wanted to really integrate it into what was going on in the therapy and wait until I had an opening that was given to me by my clients. And not just because I wanted to be a good white person, but because then it became relevant in the therapy.
Dr. Keith Sutton: (12:49)
Well, and I think that, I think that's definitely a place I know for, for me, that I'm always thinking, you know, in doing all this training and thinking about culture and kind of situating oneself and also figuring out where my client is at, and should we go into this now? Is this what they're, what's important to them in this moment? And so on. And how to acknowledge. And, and I think that even with all the training and thinking about it, it still can be awkward, and, you know, uncomfortable and, and so on. But I, I think that, you know, going into those uncomfortable spaces and just like, I think in therapy we're oftentimes figuring out, am I, am I doing this for me, or am I doing this for my client? And kind of, and I think particularly around this issue, it is a tightrope to walk to be able to kind of address issues and be present with our client while at the same time, um, yeah. Not like you're saying nonsense. I'm the good white person here, or so on.
Dr. Jane Ariel: (13:47)
So I wanted to, I mean, there's a lot of other things I wanna talk about, but I wanted to talk about, you know, and maybe you could add to this as well, Keith, that there are three things, or, and probably four or five or six that I try and keep in mind or I try and act from. One is the question of humility.
Dr. Jane Ariel: (14:05)
You know, that I personally have to remain humble. And it, what I said before is I'm always about to make mistakes, but I have to be ready to make mistakes. I have to take the risks of talking about things which are difficult, and putting myself out there in a way where I'm saying, you know, I don't know very much about this, and I'm apt to make wrong steps. And to constantly try to make myself aware of that. And I can promise you, I've been confronted sometimes by people. Like, I was in a meeting and I called, there were two African American people in the room, and I called one of them the name of the other. And, you know, thank goodness a white person said to me, Jane, you just did this. And I do wanna say to everybody who's listening to this that wasn't my worst mistake.
Dr. Jane Ariel: (14:58)
I've made many, many others. But the feeling in one's stomach, the feeling of, oh my God, what did I do? And how did I hurt this person is no fun to have. But this is where I think training is important, where we have to understand, we have to keep in the conversation. No matter what, no matter how our stomachs are feeling, no matter how much anxiety we have, that what people of color particularly are from white people, there's many other things are looking for, is somebody who's willing to really stay in the conversation and not leave.
Dr. Keith Sutton: (15:35)
Yeah. And also I think not get defensive too,
Dr. Jane Ariel: (15:38)
For sure.
Dr. Keith Sutton: (15:39)
Because I think that difference between what the intent is and what the impact is, is so important. And really taking, taking the, allowing the space to talk about or listen to what happens before jumping in and saying, oh, well that's not what I meant. Or, oh, you're taking it the wrong way. Or, or something to that effect.
Dr. Jane Ariel: (15:58)
I'm so glad you're saying that, Keith, because like in visions, we have a series of guidelines, and one of them that I find one of them that a lot of them are wonderful, but one of them that I find most important is intent versus impact. And really though, as we're dealing with that, we have to remember where we are. If we're in the powerful position, and I wanna talk a little bit about intersectionality in a minute, but if we're in a powerful position, you're so right that what we have to find out is what was the impact of what I said. And a lot of times I've certainly had it with men as a woman saying, you know, I didn't mean that at all. And yeah, that's what I meant. Don't take it that way. Rather than saying, listen, let me hear what it is that you felt when I said that. And, uh, you know, not defending myself at all after you do that, and if you're comfortable enough, which brings me to my second point, then you can have a real conversation about how you felt and whatever. But that comes much, much later. So the second point that I wanted to bring up was, in these conversations, and again, people in oppressed situations are incredibly sensitive to this, how authentic are we?
Dr. Jane Ariel: (17:11)
So the second notion after humility is authenticity. And that means that I'm willing as I'm talking to you, or I'm talking to anybody else, to really be who I am and to say what's true for me, and to be vulnerable and to say, you know, God, I made that mistake and my stomach is churning, and you know, I'm so, so sorry, and yet I did this.
Dr. Keith Sutton: (17:34)
Yeah. That transparency.
Dr. Jane Ariel: (17:36)
Transparency and however you wanna define authenticity. I think, I truly think that that's why I and other people who do good work in this area have been successful because I try and be who I am. And talk about all the aspects of it. Not just that I'm a good therapist or not, but here I am feeling very, very vulnerable. I'm making good eye contact with you. I'm listening to you, my whole body is with you. And that's the essence I think of authenticity and probably, you know, and I know that that's what makes people able to be with you in some way. And bring their own vulnerability.
Dr. Keith Sutton: (18:15)
I think that aspect of vulnerability too, as the, as a therapist or as a work colleague, or even if it's a friend or a family, whoever, it might be just that vulnerability of like, oh, like, yeah, I screwed up. Like I, and again, not, not so that the other person has to take care of you, but more just kind of being open and acknowledging your fallibility not as a reason for the other person to forgive or take care of, but just as an acknowledgement. Uh, you know, I think that that's, you know, an important piece. Cuz I think like you're saying too, that we're, and I know you've, you've mentioned intersectionality we'll get into, but I mean like right. Cuz there's so many different layers of privilege. And for me as a cisgender white male, upper middle class, you know, it's, I've got, I've got all of it. And so, you know, that there's these aspects of, you know, looking at, yeah. Both skin color, cultural background, immigrant status, sexual orientation ability, you know, gender, you know, all these kind of aspects that are at, at play. And, and so important to be kind of thinking on those multiple levels. And also even somebody who maybe doesn't have a lot of those privileges, but is a therapist, like you're saying, they have privilege by being the therapist and, and being, a person in power in that relationship.
Dr. Jane Ariel: (19:38)
Right. Uh, and as I said to you before, one of the realizations I had as a white person was, how every step that I take is influenced by my privilege. And that also brings up another question, which we haven't talked about yet. And that is, like, as a white person, white therapists dealing with white clients, to what extent does one bring up questions of racism? To what extent does one bring up context? And I think often because of our training and because certainly of psychodynamic therapy, you know, we're looking at the internal structure of things and, and believe me, I think that that's incredibly important, but I also believe that we have to constantly be aware of our privilege. And I think sometimes, I don't do this all of the time, although I think I maybe should do it more, that I wanna talk to my white clients about their privilege as well. It's a little bit difficult because it often doesn't come up. I think if we're aware of it, I once did, a session, run by a person of color with four white therapists, and really the person of color was asking us, well, when you're working with white people, do you bring up this subject? There's nothing more important to me in the world than this subject.
Dr. Jane Ariel: (21:00)
And, you know, I'd like to say yes and I believe we should, but it's, it's a tricky subject, but I think it's one that we have to keep in mind. Which brings me to the third point, which we've kind of intimated here. And that is the constant awareness of context and privilege, no matter where I am, no matter where I'm walking. And that's certainly true in the therapeutic endeavor. It has to do with the first phone call, it has to do with the first meeting. It has to be do with, you know, what do, what questions do you ask so that you learn about context so that you're not just assuming that whatever internal structures got built psychologically. And we used to think our mothers, our fathers, our families are also built very much by the context in which people grow.
Dr. Keith Sutton: (21:54)
Yes.
Dr. Jane Ariel: (21:55)
And I think that those questions, for when I'm training therapists, I'm trying to make them constantly aware, and constantly aware, of like, where their privilege is, but also what the context is that their clients grew up in. Because I think certainly psychologically, that that's one of the most important areas of a consistent, strong ego. Man, if you spend your life being looked at, like you're dangerous or whatever word you wanna say or not smart or whatever, how much it affects your sense of being. And your sense of self-esteem.
Dr. Keith Sutton: (22:34)
Well there's that, that, Cooley’s looking glass theory of self that we get our sense of self from how we are reflected in other people. And so yes, if you've got so much of society reflecting to you that you're bad or not good enough or, or not of value or, or only certain aspects of you are of value or so on, then that of course is gonna affect your sense of self. Um, and it, I I think this aspect too, like you're saying, of being aware of one's privilege, you and I have been talking recently about privilege, and particularly what I oftentimes think about is that, you know, by definition privilege means that you're kind of unaware of these things because like you're saying, walking along how every step is related to privilege. And I know at least from my experience being in, you know, various trainings and through intercultural awareness classes in grad school and, and, and the facilitated listening circles at afta that I'm just, you know, just always struck by my privilege by each, you know, thing that somebody's talking about that, you know, is oftentimes somebody that's, that's of different than I am.
Dr. Keith Sutton: (23:39)
And just, again, a lot of things that I just don't think about or see. And even with trying to bring this all the consciousness than getting caught up in life and, you know, it kind of, you know, fading to the background or those blind spots coming up. So it's, it's almost like, it's like a muscle that has to be constantly kind of worked or grown or so on, because people that don't have privilege, they can't, they don't ignore that it's with them every day, it's in their face and so on. So they're, it's not a, to forget about it is privilege.
Dr. Jane Ariel: (24:10)
Absolutely. And, and many people of color or sexual orientation or whatever, develop a kind of a second language. You know, they have their own language when they speak together, and then they've developed a second language in order to get along in the privileged world. So that brings up a couple of other things. One I wanted to say is that, you know, when I do mediations and workshops about this, I kind of, I don't always say it, but I feel it. I wouldn't wanna be a white cisgendered male. Middle upper class. I just wouldn't wanna be then, because, you know, everybody's looking, since you've defined yourself that way, everybody's looking at you well, you know, like get it together or whatever. So-
Dr. Keith Sutton: (24:53)
I'm like literally the man.
Dr. Jane Ariel: (24:54)
Yeah. And literally, and you know, it takes a lot of strength and I appreciate this interview, Keith. Also, it takes a lot of strength to say, you know, I am this and I have all this privilege, but I'm willing to look at. I'm willing to be it. Which brings up another question, both in therapy, but also, around all of the area of multiculturalism. And that is being able to accept people where they are in this journey. And I, you know, I say those words as if it's easy. It isn't easy to do. And yet I think it's incredibly important, because they're, you can have a group of people or a client or anybody who's at a very different place in their journey. And the real question then is how do you accept them?
Dr. Jane Ariel: (25:45)
And how to communicate with them that, for example, you as a cisgendered man wouldn't feel that I'm thinking like, oh, well, you know, like you're, whatever. I want you to think when I'm talking to you that I care deeply about where you are in your journey and that you've been conditioned like everybody else. And I wanna be receptive to that. I always haven't been successful at it, because I have some judgments. We have to watch our judgments and they're, and they're subtle. We talk about the word of implicit bias. So, you know, I could easily have, I, as even as a facilitator, could have implicit bias towards you. And I don't wanna have that. I wanna really see you as you are, and I wanna see everybody else in the room as they are. And some people are pretty far along the journey. They can talk about it in a way they're not scared of it, and other people are like, I really wanna change. But I dunno how.
Dr. Keith Sutton: (26:40)
What comes to mind is the term appreciative ally, Bill Matson's term from the collaborative therapy with multi-stress families. And that I've always kind of been struck by that. I mean, I am, you know, got into the field, you know, doing some training, motivational interviewing, and then being more interested in more of the post-modern approaches such as narrative therapy and solution focused therapy its real focus of being more transparent. One down collaborating and partnering with our clients rather than being the expert and kind of more of a top down approach. But that aspect of the appreciative ally of one kind of meeting the person where they're at, and also having that positive perspective to see the world through the client's eyes. Because, you know, no one is usually the villain in their own story. Like they're, the person is doing the things they're doing cuz it makes sense to them. And if we can understand that and validate that and meet them, and the client feels understood, and I feel like I understand the client, then we're kind of together and then we can potentially move forward, but if I don't get that of why it makes sense, like you're saying, meeting them where they're at and accepting that, then it's hard for us to, to go in any direction from there. We don't start with that.
Dr. Jane Ariel: (27:57)
Right. Well, thank you for saying that. I think it's important. I do wanna talk, I wanna make one point too, and you and I have talked about this a little bit, that it's also very important as far as I'm concerned to work, if you're a white person to work with white people, so that you have the opportunity working with white people to one, allow them to be vulnerable. They're not, they're in in a homogeneous group of some kind. I mean, the purpose is always to be able to talk across difference. But when you're in a white group, you're not asking people of color to teach you. You're really trying to learn what you can together. And there's a lot of experiences and vulnerabilities that people don't talk about. And I like to do white groups because I think that there's an opportunity to do that, although it's often hard.
Dr. Jane Ariel: (28:50)
You know, white people often aren't so much in touch with their feelings. I don't wanna make a generalization. Also, they have different cultures and different experiences, but it's often hard to get a white group to go deeper into these kind of hidden issues for which we've been conditioned forever. You know, we'll say, well, I'm not a racist and I can say I'm not a racist, but I am. You know, there's just ways that I am. So I think that it, it's, it's said in the world of multiculturalism that you definitely don't want, when you're in the position of a privilege, to ask people who aren't to teach you about it.
Dr. Keith Sutton: (29:24)
Yes, yes. Yeah.
Dr. Jane Ariel: (29:25)
But the main way is not to do that, is to make sure that you also participate in groups that are homogeneous in your kind of privilege.
Dr. Keith Sutton: (29:34)
Yes.
Dr. Jane Ariel: (29:34)
So I just want, wanna make that point.
Dr. Keith Sutton: (29:36)
Well, I think that's, there's two things that come up for me. And, and as you say that, I don't know if you've seen, there was a video I saw in grad school in intercultural awareness where I think it was a group of men that all came together and they were going around introducing themselves. It was a mixed race group. And one of the men introduced himself and he said, it was a white man. He said, I'm a racist. And I know that everybody was like, oh my gosh. And part what he was saying is, I'm a racist. I have thoughts of stereotypes and and so on. And this is part of me. Although again, he was, you know, uh, yeah, he was an ally. But at the same time, kind of acknowledging that there are these mental heuristics that there has been this experience of, you know, stereotypes that sink in from culture and from the larger society and so on, that that each person may hold and have, you know, reactions to, and again, being aware of those, those pieces being.
Dr. Jane Ariel: (30:28)
And that reminds me of my association as to this, that for the longest time, that's not been true in the last 10 years or so, I didn't want to use the word white supremacy. You know, I felt like if I said you're a white supremacist, or even brought up the word that there would be a lot of defensiveness and resistance to it, and it wasn't in the vocabulary. Then, now, it is in the vocabulary. Thank goodness that it's in the vocabulary because it's talking about the whole way this country was created. And, um, you know, that's a much longer discussion that we have, but you know, what's going on politically today is wild. I mean, it's pretty wild.
Dr. Keith Sutton: (31:09)
Yeah. Yeah.
Dr. Jane Ariel: (31:10)
Even for example, the Texas ban on abortion, I'm not talking about voter suppression. The Texas ban on abortion, it's, it's like who's in control of whose bodies. And then people, you know, now they're making it possible. I don't know if you've been reading about it, but they're making it possible for any person in the country to be able to sue you, if they think that you were part of trying to help somebody get an abortion. This is a ludicrous law. So that if I know that your sister took your wife to have an abortion, I don't think you, excuse me, the hypothetical that I can sue your sister, I as a citizen.
Dr. Jane Ariel: (31:53)
Now, I think what we're seeing there is white supremacy and it’s in its naked clothes, you know, like, and all of the men voting men, I mean, there's some women, but mostly there's men voting to do this in control of the body. I don't know why I was thinking of it today, but we didn't talk about it, but I guess we will. Critical race theory, which is coming up now. I don't know how much you've been paying attention to it, but, well, there's now a law in Texas, and it's, and it's going all over the country, that you cannot teach critical race theory. Now, one of the problems is that there's the definition of critical race theory is complex. But what they're, what they're talking about is that I don't want my white child to feel guilty. So you can't talk about slavery.
Dr. Jane Ariel: (32:41)
Yes. You can't talk, you can't make my child feel. So we're for forbidding the teaching of race theory, which is ludicrous. I mean, what we do in our training, what we do all over, and again, punishable like by a felon almost if you do this in school in certain places. That's not entirely true. But in my organization Visions, when this came out, we just said what, because the nature of what we do is all about trying to let people know the history. Trying to let people understand, as we just talked about what white supremacy means.
Dr. Jane Ariel: (33:20)
And do we bring this up in therapy? It's a good question. I will bring it up in therapy if something comes up. I'm not scared anymore. I used to be scared about that. So, I just wanted to bring that up as an adjunct to what you're saying also about this man who was able to say, I'm racist.
Dr. Keith Sutton: (33:38)
Yeah. Well, I think that's something that's so important too, is, you know, I was talking with a colleague of mine the other day, as I'm wanting to do more work and kind of thinking about kind of a path to, you know, more work around privilege and so on. And she's a African-American woman, and I was talking about, you know, a lot of my clients are white and, and so on. And I don't know if that's, maybe because, you know, my picture's on the website, a white name, uh, a a lot of my clients are coming to me for that reason. Or if there's things that I have on my website or could on my website that would make other people of different, you know, races. So on that, that more, uh, you know, feeling like I'm an ally that they could come and see or so on.
Dr. Keith Sutton: (34:21)
I mean, I have, again, a large, some, you know, clients of various culture and gender and so on, but, but more majority way. And she was saying, well, you know, the most of my clients are black. They're coming to me as a black therapist and so on. So she's saying, I don't think that's, that's especially in private practice, that that's, you know, too abnormal. And I think that sometimes as a white therapist, sometimes I see like the conference, you know, for our organization being on, Latina families and I'm like, oh, that's interesting. But I'm, you know, I'm not, I maybe have one client, you know, that I'm working with in that. And so sometimes it kind of feels like, oh, well, you know, that's a larger kind of intellectual issue, but not as much kind of for my own clients.
Dr. Keith Sutton: (35:01)
And then when I go, you know, again, it just, I, I think doing this again, just, it's not necessarily just about learning about this other culture, but again, it's about raising my consciousness of privilege and how that applies in my sessions with my clients. And again, even if I'm working with other white clients or so on, again, the intersectionality around gender, around race, socioeconomic status, you know, complex trauma history, you know, it's privileged to not grow up in trauma, and so on. And kind of looking at that and with, with clients who have had that experience and so on and, and working with couples where one hasn't had that experience. So yeah, I just think that's kind of important. Cause I think sometimes some therapists can think like, oh, well that's, that multicultural stuff is intellectually interesting, but it doesn't necessarily apply to my practice.
Dr. Jane Ariel: (35:49)
And oftentimes when you're training people and you spend time on social justice work or multicultural work, people say, well, oh wait, that's not what I came here for. I came here to learn therapy. And even in the organization, which we both belong to, there was a question for a long time about the dichotomy between social justice, which many times people accuse us of older white therapists and particularly often men accuse us of, um, were, uh, I just because of the phone, I just lost my, uh, train of thought.
Dr. Keith Sutton: (36:25)
Sometimes, yeah. Um, uh, people are coming to learn therapy instead of social justice, and then other people are accusing you.
Dr. Jane Ariel: (36:33)
Right. And, and what I always say, and what I totally believe is that social justice and therapy are not two separate issues. Social justice and therapy are integrated. And again, what we were talking about before, if you can't bring the contextual nature of people's life, particularly around privileged and oppression into the therapeutic endeavor, then I think you're missing something very, very important. It used to made me, make me mad that people wanted to make a distinction between those two things. So they seem so completely in connected intellectually. No, they wanted to bring that up as an important, important point. Which again, you know, I'm gonna say this also, the younger generation is changing when you now train younger therapists, they have had, and particularly in the Bay Area, I don't think this is true all over, but they've had a fair amount of knowledge about social justice.
Dr. Jane Ariel: (37:28)
They've had a course in high school, they did have a course in their, and I do believe that that, that they live again here, a more integrated life than ever before. So in a certain way, we might have to change some of our ways of teaching because people's experiences are quite different. And, you know, racial identification might not be the most important thing to teach right now. But I don't think theoretically we've come up with too much of new ways of thinking about that. But it, it brings me also to a question, Keith, that I don't wanna forget. And that is a question of intersectionality. Because you, you know, I can say for myself as a person, I think of myself as a privileged person. But in fact, I have areas of my life which are not at all privileged, and I have to be aware of them and I have to be able to work with them as well.
Dr. Jane Ariel: (38:27)
I'm a woman, so I have, what, what do I feel, for example, when I'm working with a man and am I comfortable confronting the man around his sexism? Cause I'm not in the powerful position, it's interesting. I had to learn that I felt more comfortable confronting people around racism where I was in a privileged position than I did confronting people when I was in a non-privileged position. Which of course makes sense in that, you know, one self-esteem is involved in all of that. And you know, in a way, like I was saying, that there has to be dual languages for people who are oppressed to be able to deal with the privileged world that they live in. But also when you are, you know, in an oppressed position, do you have the strength and do you have the courage to confront somebody? I think sexism is an easier one for me. I've been around it for a long, long time. There's been a lot of work done, women's movements has happened. So I don't have much trouble saying to a man, you know, you're acting like a sexist. He may not like to stay in therapy with you, or if you do it in a good way, he actually might be thrilled that you were helping him.
Dr. Keith Sutton: (39:35)
Yeah.
Dr. Jane Ariel: (39:35)
I understand that.
Dr. Keith Sutton: (39:36)
Well, yeah. And I also think too, and again, cuz I, because I hold so many privileges, you know, I oftentimes in, in addressing some of those things, kind of being able to use the curiosity and kind of, you know, being curious as I'm wondering about what you're saying, whether that's affected by gender norms or oppressive dominant stereotypes, you know, and kind of being able to open up that, that aspect of kind of the influence on the person, which sometimes can help feel a little less compensative because it's kind of, you know, it, it's postulating that their thinking is influenced by larger kind of cultural messages that they're getting. Um, and, and that that's kind of had this interplay versus kind of them being the whole owner of kind of aspect, I guess. If that makes sense. To kind of help look at that and externalize that.
Dr. Jane Ariel: (40:35)
Yeah. Yeah. With intersectionality, we also have to know, have to be conscious of, like, for example, as a woman, am I being careful not to act like a victim in some way? You know, am I being careful that I have enough strength to be able to still maintain my own being, even when I'm confronted with, you know, oppression in the world that's around gayness, it's around being a woman. It's about somewhat being a Jew, although not always. And one that does, it certainly does help one, understand the positions where, where you’re not, when you're privileged and you can begin to understand better. But it's also your own development, which I wanna bring up another subject as well. I don't know how where you are of, uh, in, after the organization, there was a group of us, I wasn't so central in it, but I participated in, I went to Kosovo.
Dr. Jane Ariel: (41:40)
We went to Kosovo in order to try and as, as family therapists, and it was sponsored in a way by af although the money didn't come from afta, and we were working with families who would just seen incredible violence. Particularly families who had watched their men being shot, which happened in a lot of places. And those are the families that we were working with. And I began to think about, um, I began to think of how do I listen to these people? How do I really open myself? So I created in my mind something called open listening. And the reason that I want, you know, it's not new to me. God knows. There's plenty of people who have worked around, how do you talk across difference, but what I thought that meant to me was how do I manage to keep my own identity.
Dr. Jane Ariel: (42:32)
Like, be aware of my culture, be aware of my biases, be aware of my privilege, stay steady internally while I'm listening to the story of somebody else. And it's a, there's a tension, there's a dynamic tension between maintaining your own sense of self, while still being completely open to listening to somebody else, not only their problems. But also understanding the context in which they grew up. And one of the ways that we dealt with that in Kosovo, which I thought was very interesting, was we never gave a lecture as a single person from America. We always gave a lecture in combination with a kosovar.
Dr. Jane Ariel: (43:15)
And what was particularly interesting, just as a detail, was when the Kosovar spoke in Albanian, then, then we got to hear the translation. And that gave you an extra moment to try and become as aware as you could of what you might say that might run contrary to the culture. In Kosovo. And, um, it was a, it was an incredible experience. And that way I learned, I'm hoping I gave something, but I think that I learned a tremendous amount about that. So I never wrote a paper about it, but I think it's incredibly important, um, to keep one sense of self. Whenever we're listening.
Dr. Keith Sutton: (43:55)
Can you say, and, and has juxtaposed against the opposite of not keeping oneself and and what does that look like?
Dr. Jane Ariel: (44:02)
Well, that's an, I think that, that's an interesting question, Keith. Like actually one of our after just wrote an article about empathy. So the, how do you stay empathic without losing yourself? And what does that mean is your question, what does that mean, losing yourself? Well, I can get so involved in somebody else's reality that I lose my own power to maintain my capacity to observe.
Dr. Keith Sutton: (44:27)
Sure.
Dr. Jane Ariel: (44:28)
To maintain my capacity to make an intervention, which is really based on what the client is saying, but also, if I'm scared or whatever, that I hold steady in my own sense of self. Yes. And, and I, you know, that, that, it's a complicated question. How you do that. You keep an integrated ego in some way. You keep a sense that of grounding, you breathe, you remember your feet are on the floor, and you don't let yourself be taken over completely by the story that somebody else is taking.
Dr. Keith Sutton: (45:02)
I think, tell me if I'm understanding this right. You know, when I think about that, I think about, I oftentimes show a clip from Brene Brown on empathy. There's a little cartoon of like a bear going down into a, a hole with someone. And I share this to a lot of my clients and in teaching. And one of the points that it's making is to be truly empathic. We have to connect with that part of ourselves that is felt that same feeling. And sometimes she talks about empathy versus sympathy. That sometimes somebody is either not willing to connect with that and they say, oh, well, you know, don't worry, like Janie's doing good in school even though Bobby's not, or you know, oh, don't worry about that miscarriage. At least you know you can get pregnant. So I'm like, like kind of a dismissal of it.
Dr. Keith Sutton: (45:43)
Cuz sometimes either they're not willing to make contact with that, or the opposite they get, they get so dysregulated by feeling that, feeling that of, you know, kind of connecting with that emotion that they're not able to still be present for the other. And so they try to fix it or they get caught up in their own experience and kind of move away from connecting. And so I don't know if that's kind of similar to it, like kind of a keeping grounded and connecting with the person while not getting overly dysregulated to fix it or to, you know, kind of lose oneself, but kind of that aspect.
Dr. Jane Ariel: (46:21)
Well, I don't know, there's some discrepancy or a tension in what you're saying because I, I don't know how you, how you would talk about this, but like, if I'm listening to somebody's story and the way that I hear it best is if it connects to something in me, I think that that's not accurate. I think that we have to be open to the story, but I'm not sure that we have to refer to ourselves about it. Now, I want, this brings up, one of this brings up the question of authenticity that we were talking about, and I think we haven't talked much about feeling and it's difficult for people in privilege often to access their feelings. So I think when you're listening to somebody else, are you a person who can access your feelings? Not necessarily the same experience.
Dr. Keith Sutton: (47:10)
Yes. Yes, exactly.
Dr. Jane Ariel: (47:11)
Right. And then can you express your feelings to that person, which is part of humility, part part of authenticity, part of being aware of context, part of letting go of protections of oneself and of, of course, we haven't talked about feelings, but the, let me just say one of the things oftentimes, you know, when I do white groups and then people of color are doing groups, a lot of the white groups saying, oh, they're laughing and they're saying a lot of things. I wanna be in their group. I don't wanna be in my group because we're too constricted in a certain way. So the capacity to be in touch deeply with feelings, with laughter, with humor, with all of those things which lighten up, the connection I think is very, very important. And it's part of empathy.
Dr. Keith Sutton: (48:01)
Definitely. Well, and the, when I think of empathy, I worked at a program when I was in undergrad and I was working, helping some kids with tutoring after school. And many of them were gang involved. And I was talking to the director and I said, how may, to help these kids, I've never been in a gang, or I've, I haven't had that experience. And he said, but, but you've had the experience of maybe feeling alone. You've had a moment of feeling unsafe. And by connecting with what that feels like or particularly, you know, I was at a Black Lives Matter rally and hearing somebody that was speaking and I was just connecting with what it feels like to be helpless. And then kind of that, that small bit and then kind of expanding that to imagine what this person's life must be like as they were talking about these, in the experiences of injustice that, again, I don't experience it all, but I could imagine even just a moment of that helplessness.
Dr. Keith Sutton: (48:59)
And then it's kind of like looking at that exponentially. Um, that's kind of that the way I think about. But I, again, I think sometimes when somebody connects with that, it becomes overwhelming and they wanna say, oh, but things are getting better or this or that. And they, they kind of wanna make it better to not feel that feeling, rather than really staying with the emotion of the other person and resonating with them. Cuz yeah, and that Rene Brown one, she says that she talks about empathy is feeling with someone and that kind.
Dr. Jane Ariel: (49:27)
I like that very much the way that you're talking about that. I think it's very important. I think I, I think in general, one of the, one of the issues with privilege and those people, those of us who have walked around in the world thinking, well, I can do whatever I want in some way, and I have the right to do, I deserve to do whatever I want. That it also shuts off often something not always, but often does. And it's, that's something that it shuts off that I think you're talking about, and I'm talking about that brings us into authentic connection with people no matter who they are.
Dr. Keith Sutton: (50:04)
Yeah.
Dr. Jane Ariel: (50:05)
And, um, I think nothing could be more important. And it, it's very hard to know how to train for that, you know?
Dr. Keith Sutton: (50:10)
Yeah, yeah. Definitely. I mean, I think that, yeah, that, that aspect of the open listening, I mean, you know, I always kind of go back to like motivational interviewing and the, you know, those, those kind of more humanistic aspects because really the, I do trainings for folks in this and that, you know, know really the, the foundation is what they call the spirit of motivational interviewing, but it's essentially having a profound respect and value of the other person. And if that person is not going to make the change or doing heroin or so on, that's their choice. And as a therapist, we need to respect that and value that and, and know that we may not know what's the right thing for that person, but only with that kind of separateness and connection that can we make change, if we're just trying to use a technique to get the person to do what we think is best for them, then that's problematic. And, and, um, so it's-
Dr. Jane Ariel: (51:03)
That brings up humility.
Dr. Keith Sutton: (51:04)
Exactly. Yeah. Yeah.
Dr. Jane Ariel: (51:06)
I wanted to say one thing. I was thinking like, if you asked me the question, which you didn't, you know, if I'm thinking of my identity in the world and my identity as a person who's involved in social justice, that I was thinking of what I might say to you if you ask that question. And I think it is walking out on the street and being at home or any conversation that I retain my capacity to constantly be aware of the differences in power between me and anybody. I might be on the downside of power. And I wanna be able to respond well to that with certain kind of inner strength. But I also can often be on the upside of power. And I wanna just be aware that the experience of anybody who's interacting with me, they're having many, many different experiences of what it means to react to somebody, you know, to interact with somebody in power.
Dr. Jane Ariel: (52:02)
So it, it's that constant awareness. It’s tiring actually. And it's, and and of course, like we said before, I don't do it perfectly because I still, you know, I'm pretty old, but I'm conditioned in a very, very strong way. I was, I was thinking about critical race theory because I was thinking about Native Americans, I'm thinking of Native Americans going to school and somebody says, no, we can't teach about what we did to your, to your world, and that you're living, I, I would suspect that if you asked a fifth grader today Oh, where, wait, do Native Americans live? They would have no idea that most of them live on reservations. Or, or how many people of them do live on reservations or that we took them all of their children away from school and
Dr. Keith Sutton: (52:49)
Yeah. What, what happened after, uh, Columbus landed?
Dr. Jane Ariel: (52:52)
Yeah. Yeah. And that, we have to keep learning that and keep teaching it and keep walking with it.
Dr. Keith Sutton: (53:01)
And some of that, I didn't even really learn until, you know, grad school and coming to the Bay Area and learning about Japanese internment camps or you know, the kind of the, you know, and, and really engaging with some of the history here, which, you know, growing up in, on the East coast and going to, you know, college in Colorado, it wasn't really until coming here and really a lot of the focus on kind of the, the, the true histories of, of different, you know, groups within America, you know, was I even aware because that stuff just wasn't taught or wasn't, you know, at the forefront.
Dr. Jane Ariel: (53:34)
Right. Well, that brings us back also to the larger question, which I think is very interesting. And I I don't think it's well yet taught, and that is, what do you do in a therapy session? How do you talk about these things? When do you talk about these things? How do you, how are you constantly where, for example, as a therapist, what does it mean to that particular person in that particular culture, in that particular context? What does it mean to be talking to you? Because even in the essence of therapy, very often when you're talking about across difference, you know, it's not part of the culture. It's not part of what you think that we do, which reminds me that we didn't talk about spirituality either. And spirituality often when you're talking across difference.
Dr. Jane Ariel: (54:22)
And if you're not a, if you're not a particularly religious person or a spiritual person as a therapist, you may miss that one of the most important things might be for the clients that you're working with might be spirituality. So, again, it's an exploration of places where you, that's not where you are, but you're able and open to having those conversations across difference.. Which in the end is what I'm, as far as I'm concerned, social justice is about creating equality. And social justice is also as therapists being able to talk about these things and believing that talking about them is important.
Dr. Keith Sutton: (54:59)
Definitely. And I think that aspect too, you know, I always kind of, when I'm supervising too, is that when you have that moment of thinking like, oh, why isn't this going right? Or why isn't that person talking to their boss? Or why aren't they, you know, deciding to yeah, apply to that college or something that, again, when we think something's not going the way it should, that's our cue to kind of step back and be curious and kind of check that out, our own kind of beliefs and so on, and seeing if that's a different experience for the person. And oftentimes that's when it does come outta persons, like actually in my, and again, whether they, I think that even transcends culture and so on and, and you know, religion, but it, but also, especially with these differences that might be culturally induced with, that person's experience. Cuz otherwise we can press forward with our beliefs of what we think is right or so on. Um, but that may, you know, be, again, stepping on somebody else's experience and they may not feel powerful enough, or enough power to be able to speak up about that. So it's more on the on us of the one in power to be aware and be checking in and situating oneself and being curious.
Dr. Jane Ariel: (56:03)
Absolutely. I realize that we're coming to the end of our, I'm wondering if you had any last question that you wanted to ask me, or have we covered most of what we needed to?
Dr. Keith Sutton: (56:13)
I, you know, I think we covered so much and so such, uh, a lot of really great stuff. And I think, you know, again, this aspect I think of privilege and particularly, you know, as white therapists and we have our, you know, intersectionalities, but I think this, this aspect, like you're talking about, about, you know, this importance of the authenticity, about the open listening, the, you know, awareness of context for privilege and humility and really trying to bring and raise our consciousness around privilege because like you're saying, it's with every step. So I really appreciate the time and I really, uh, always enjoy talking with you, Jane. It's great.
Dr. Jane Ariel: (56:50)
It's been a pleasure talking with you, Keith. We could be on the Rachel Maddow show when she says thank you for taking your time. And you say Pleasure to be with you,
Dr. Keith Sutton: (57:00)
That's right. Exactly. Well, thanks so much. I appreciate it. Take care.
Dr. Jane Ariel: (57:05)
Okay.
Dr. Keith Sutton: (57:06)
Bye-bye.
Dr. Jane Ariel: (57:07)
Bye.
Dr. Keith Sutton: (57:09)
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