Queering therapy: Moving beyond LGBTQ+ ‘affirmative’ counseling

Affirmative psychotherapy involves the inclusion of LGBT-affirmative attitudes, knowledge, and skills into a counselor’s existing therapeutic approach (Pepping, Lyons, & Morris, 2018). Although affirmative psychotherapy provides an antidote to non-affirmative practices (i.e., encouraging repression of sexual or gender identities, heteronormative assumptions, etc.), queer theory provides many of the same benefits of affirmative psychotherapy approaches while also addressing problematic power dynamics that can be present in affirmative psychotherapy. Queer theory resists a singular definition but within the current presentation some unifying features of queer theories will be discussed along with how they can be implemented in therapeutic practice such as: resisting categorization, challenging essentialism, questioning binaries, examining context, and the examination of power relations (Barker & Scheele, 2016). Attendees will also learn how queer theory supports work with clients with multiple marginalized, intersecting identities. Overall, queer theory will be presented as a liberating theoretical lens through which counselors can better understand their clients, themselves, and their work with LGBTQ+ clients.