1. The training and support of student trainees, interns, and licensed professionals who work with mental wellness issues for individuals, couples, families, and communities.
2. The assistance of international and domestically diverse students in their application of mental wellness principles within their communities of concern.
3. The provision of counseling services to individuals, couples, and families in the greater San Diego area seeking our consultation, especially those with lower income status who do not have access to insurance privileges.
4. Research pertaining to integrative mental wellness practices and outcome data for a particular socio-political emphasis of therapeutic treatment.

Reflections from our Founder, Dr. Jan Ewing

Welcome to our CTC community. While we have been in existence together for only a few years each of us comes with history(s) that connect us to our mission and to hopes of being community.

Our CTC mission and intentions are four fold: 1. Training and providing care for mental wellness workers and any persons caring for the wellbeing of others; 2. Serving persons in San Diego seeking mental wellness services, especially those with lower income and without insurance privileges; 3. Providing a context for action research and learning with the community; 4. Committing to the development of ideas of being community in these efforts.

For the past 20 years I have had a professional focus and passion for training relational therapists (MFT’s) in order to accomplish two personal mandates: to contribute to society, and to care for each other. I would define my current understanding of relational therapy training as the liberation of therapists and those persons who consult us from oppressive internal and social constraints. My interest in MFT training has not only been on advancing notions about ‘therapy’ but also to make a contribution towards how we relate as ‘citizens of the world’--in community with diverse others. More specifically, my agenda to expand and transform the field of MFT is informed by a social constructionist, Narrative, and critical theory lens, in which I am purposefully attending to power, reflecting about and responsible for my own situated knowledge, inviting marginalized voices into creating knowledge, practicing emancipatory forms of pedagogy, collaborating in training, emphasizing praxis in research, and intentionally creating community, all of which inform one another.

At a time in my therapy work, well over a decade ago, I began to wonder if I belonged in the field of family therapy because some of the theory, training and practices seemed to be in violation of my personal ethics and the ethics of those who were consulting with me. I had experienced our western context in the USA (particularly southern California) as having powerful assumptions about people, relating, education, therapy practices and research that were dominating our lives and work. I had begun to reflect on how my work and life was informed by strong currents of western thought and my own biographical history as a white, middle class, female were informing my work (perhaps unwittingly). This became especially noticeable to me when I was reconnected with my past through working with persons in poverty, living in the Appalachian region of the western US. I began to understand some of the constraints on their lives as being connected to culture and social structures and recognized these as formidable challenges. It was at that time that cultural context became my lens of understanding people and their struggle for empowerment in their lives. So I set out to find such emphasis and was introduced to the work of Australian therapist Michael White.

I found my hope for my work being restored as a group of us (professors, students, and friends) started discussing Michael White’s work and what was being referred to at this time as the Third Wave of therapy. Through the influence of the narrative community work I have come to appreciate additional ideas that are outside dominant western discourses and that resonated with me in meaningful ways.

This personal clarity in my work and my desire to stay close to values that are important to me is why I decided it was necessary to create a space with a dedicated purpose of keeping these practices central to the shaping of our practice, research, personal lives, and community—thus the birth of CTC.

Since I believe we must be intentional in our work to create contexts that are more keeping with our practices and values, I decided to contact a group of local colleagues and friends and suggested that we start such an effort here, now… which was formally launched in January of 2006. Many of their stories follow...

Co-Directors:

Ron Estes, MFT

My titles at CTC include Co-Director, Supervisor, Training Faculty and Advisory Board Member. I feel inspired by the devotion, intelligence and heart of this constellation of persons at CTC.  I’ve been engaged with cross-disciplinary ideas that inform narrative practices since the early 90’s.  In the rolls at CTC and elsewhere, I’m interested in cultivating non-pathologizing contexts that disempower problems, revere personal preferences and expose unrecognized possibilities.  I don’t identify with the title of “therapist” per se.  Common notions of what that title means don’t quite fit with my experience of working and living.  However, I do hold and honor a license as a Marriage Family Therapist, I do have conversations sitting in a room guided by research, practice and considered ideas, I do hold myself accountable for my influence in these consultations, and I’m told these conversations have “therapeutic” effects.  To support this work I find collaboration with people at CTC indispensable to an ongoing evaluation of what is most useful to those who consult me and us.  I’ve written about some of the interests that guide therapeutic practice by contributing to articles published in professional therapy journals.

These interests in supportive conversations also mingle with my longtime involvement in the arts and creative disciplines where I teach, collaborate and practice movement and improvisational disciplines.  So, in addition to therapeutic consultations, I have developed ways of working tailored to the challenges specific to Artists, Students, Writers, Teachers, Preachers, Thinkers, Tinkerers… to help them keep their practices connected to imagination and what they value; flesh out current curiosities; free-up “stuckness” in creative process; identify what is most compelling in their work, and recognize useful action in the face of the demands of productive creative lives. 

I also enjoy nature, cooking delicious local food with friends, surfing, and audiencing performance arts.

Erin Falvey, MA

As a founding member of The San Diego Center for Therapeutic Collaboration, I have had the great privilege to work in creative and collaborative ways with my colleagues and friends as we have developed our non profit, community based counseling, research, and training center.

As a Co-Director, training faculty member, and advisory board member at CTC, I am invested in promoting a context which supports education and training in narrative and social constructionist therapeutic practices.

I am currently working on my Ph.D. in Education and Social Justice at San Diego State University and Claremont Graduate University.

  My research, therapeutic practice, and educational philosophy are largely influenced by critical theory and pedagogy. My research interests include: the socio-political implications of therapeutic theories and practices, action research in community settings, the development of therapist professional identity, LGBT-affirmative therapist education, and meaning making following trauma.

Further, my current work involves the expansion of existing research methodologies through bridging critical theory, qualitative methods, and therapeutic practice.

Through research, clinical practice, and my role as an educator, CTC has become a forum for my commitment to transformative educational and therapeutic practices, social justice and advocacy, critical consciousness, and praxis.

Sarah Kahn, MA

It has brought me great joy to be a part of the development of the San Diego Center for Therapeutic Collaboration. For me, CTC has become a home for my inspiration and passion for social justice, advocacy, and the field of mental health. A medium through which I have been able to contribute to creating contexts that support narrative and social constructionist approaches to client work, training, community development and research.

Although I have been involved in CTC since its inception, my current roles include: Co-Director, Training Faculty Member, and Advisory Board Secretary.

As a doctoral student in Education and Social Justice at San Diego State University and Claremont Graduate University, I am dedicated to including new and innovative epistemological material into the development of the field of MFT. In addition, I enjoy being an educator at SDSU as well as being involved in teaching for the SDSU Study Abroad Program in Cyprus.

The majority of my research, therapeutic practice, and educational philosophies have been influenced by social constructionism, critical theory, cultural pluralism, and libratory approaches to pedagogy. My current research interests include: the development of therapist professional identity; the influence of power in MFT training and practice; socio-political and cultural implications of therapeutic theories and practice within communities; mentorship; and utilizing narrative approaches to therapy in integrative medical contexts.

It is my hope that as CTC continues to grow, that we as a community will be able to form a supportive alliance with you in ways that feel honoring, respectful and empowering.