Insights from Dr. Kenneth Hardy
I had the privilege of listening to Ken Hardy as he presented at the NASW CT specialty conference on social justice. He focuses on oppression, which of course has a lot of overlap with trauma. Dr. Hardy is a Professor of Family Therapy at Drexel University and the Director of the Eikenberg Institute for Relationships in NYC. He has written several books including Teens Who Hurt: Clinical Interventions to break the Cycle of Adolescent Violence (Guilford Press, 2005) and, with Monica McGoldrick, ReVisioning Family Therapy: Race, Culture and Gender in Clinical Practice (Guilford Press, 2008). Dr. Hardy described people as divided into three groups: jailers, helper, and healer. Jailers value correction over connection. They protect the prevailing order even at the cost of crushing the human spirit. Their primary goal is to keep order, and they use the tactics of demanding obedience or ejection. Their words are: Not here! Out of here! Dr. Hardy pointed out that there is a lot of recruitment...