I was delighted to speak with therapist Joe Berger, who, in addition to being a therapist with an important take on how to treat youth with gender issues, and how to work with their parents, is a happily transitioned female. As part of the Heterodox Trans People series, I asked him about his own experience, his work on Family Systems, and his take on the role of parents in their children’s transition.
Joe Berger, LICSW, is a therapist in private practice in Burlington, VT. He works with individuals, couples, and families, and about a third of his clients identify as transgender or nonbinary. Prior to that he worked several years in community mental health, predominantly with incarcerated and formerly incarcerated women and their families. A trans man himself, he has been using Bowen Family Systems Theory to aid in his thinking about gender-related distress and transition. He received a Masters in Social Work from the University of Vermont in 2012, and completed postgraduate training at the Bowen Center in Washington, D.C. He currently serves as faculty at the Vermont Center for Family Studies.
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