Privilege in the Room: Training Future Psychologists to Work With Power, Privilege, and Intersectionality Within the Therapeutic Relationship

Between the racial reckoning of 2020 and wider spread policy development that is explicitly homophobic and transphobic, there have been consistent and resurgent calls for clinicians to address aspects of power and privilege in psychotherapy. This is especially important in a field that continues to be largely White, cisgender, and heterosexual (not to mention abled, socioeconomically privileged, and privileged in many other aspects of human diversity). However, too few models for how to accomplish this in actual practice are offered in the literature. Further, while there is little guidance for clinicians on how to address power, privilege, and intersectionality in the therapy room, there is even less direction for how to train those learning to be clinicians to do this from the start. The purpose of this article is to translate existing knowledge into a framework for supervisors to guide trainees’ application in psychotherapy. The article provides an overview of social location, including an analytic framework, as well as a set of practical steps for supervisors and trainees.