“They Hate Me Now, But Where Was Everyone When I Needed Them?”

Dr. Beth Kita is a clinical social worker in public/private practice in San Francisco. Over 15 years ago – by way of working in women’s health research, community organizing, adolescent residential treatment, and child welfare – she found her way into social work: she obtained an MSW from UC Berkeley and a PhD (in social work) from Smith College.  As a social worker, she adheres to a person-in-environment perspective, which means that she thinks of suffering and healing both as dependent on one’s environment and the people within in. Working from psychoanalytic and trauma-informed approaches means that she also adheres to an environment-in-person perspective, and attends to the ways in which we internalize our experiences and often unconsciously recreate them. She thinks a lot about the multitude of experiences that shape us – where and when we are born, by whom we are raised, how we were (or were not) understood by important others around us, how the world in which we live supports or undermines us, and how our social identities (race, gender, orientation, abledness) and positionalities shape us.

In addition to her clinical work, she advises and supervises clinicians at various levels of training, develop programs, and provide consultation to both individuals and organizations. She is affiliated with: American Association for Psychoanalysis in Clinical Social Work, Coalition for Clinical Social Work, Reflective Spaces/Material Places, and the San Francisco Center for Psychoanalysis. She teaches in the MSW program at UC Berkeley, is the chairperson of the Coalition for Clinical Social Work, and publishes and presents on a range of topics related to psychodynamic social work, trauma, and social justice. You can access her CV here.