Queer Counseling & Narrative Practice
with Charley Lang
Course Description
This newly updated course offers seven lessons exploring strength-based narrative therapy in working with clients identified as LGBTQ+. Issues include heterosexism and its discontents, privileging voices from the margins, celebrating queer community, navigating non-traditional relationships, trans experience, intersexuality, and narrative approaches in the treatment of trauma. The course features topical readings throughout, along with videos and dyadic exercises, interactive padlets and video guides, and two full instructor clinical sessions, one with an individual, the other with a couple. For an additional $40, registrants can earn 14 APA approved CE credits through Alliant International University. For course objectives, see below.
We are thrilled to welcome Charley Lang, who revised this course he created over a decade ago. Having practiced as a narrative therapist for the past 25-plus years, Charley is co-founder of the Narrative Counseling Center in Los Angeles, where he consults with individuals and couples and trains interns and therapists. Working with a wide diversity of clients in his private practice, he has a wealth of experience working with queer-identified people whose gender identity or sexual orientation doesn’t conform to societal norms. Charley wears many hats. An actor in his previous life (The West Wing, Star Trek: The Next Generation, NYPD Blue, ER, among many others…), he has produced and directed three award-winning documentary films. As a professor at Antioch University Los Angeles, he teaches several courses in the psychology concentration, both at the undergraduate and graduate levels. This online course is an adaptation of a popular course he created- and frequently updates- at Antioch Loa Angeles.
To learn more about Charley, click here.
Registration now open!
Sliding Fee Structure
Tuition for these courses—along with donations—is how we fund the creation and sustenance of this website and community it aims to facilitate. While our courses provide APA Approved Alliant CEs, we’re most interested in developing Re-Authoring Teaching into a generative community that grows and sustains Narrative Therapy and each other for years to come. Our new tiered pricing structure—subsidized, regular sustaining, and patron—reflects our best efforts to realize that dream. Re-Authoring Teaching Members receive a 10 % discount. Please select the highest rate you are able to pay:
- Sustaining (Regular) Rate will help us recover costs to produce this course and sustain our website: $110 USD
- Sustaining Re-Authoring Teaching (RT) Member 10 % Discount: $99 USD
- Subsidized Rate is a reduced fee for those of us facing financial barriers that interfere with paying the regular fee: $99 USD
- Subsidized RT Member Rate 10 % Discount: $89 USD
- Patron is for anyone who can afford additional financial support to help support our community and resources: $225 USD
- Patron RT Member 10% Discount: $202 USD
- Donation is for anyone who can afford to contribute to our Nonprofit Organization including the development of future courses, resources and community building
- 8 Alliant CE credits for $25
Please contact us if you would like a rate for a group of four or more, higher education, or due to current circumstances, you require a further reduced fee.
Earning Continuing Education?
Psychologists and other mental health professionals can earn 8 APA-approved Continuing Education credits through Alliant International University.! You will need to pay the extra $40 fee. Simply pass the quiz at the end of the course, fill out the Alliant evaluation, and email your confirmation to [email protected]. We will then email you the certificate for 12 CEs.
When you purchase the course
- You will receive an email with the link to the correct page for beginning the course.
- Each lesson and topic also has space at the bottom for comments.
- Contact us if you would like a Study-Buddy – a partner with whom to move through the course.
- When a group of 6 or more signs up, we can offer a live webinar.
- Please contact us to inquire about a group rate, a scholarship reduced fee or a live webinar.
If you have already registered, access course here:
Course Objectives
Participants will:
- Articulate an understanding of heterosexism and its marginalizing effects on LGBTQ-identified individuals;
- Explore the underlying assumptions and beginning practices of strength-based narrative therapy in nurturing preferred LGBTQ identities;
- Demonstrate an ability to reflect on the broader political, psychological and sociological issues impacting many LGBTQ persons through reading, videos, and online quiz.
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Demonstrate an understanding of the inherent assumptions of narrative therapy approaches to psychotherapy.
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Develop emerging skills as clinicians engaged in narrative therapy practice with marginalized individuals and families.
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Synthesize the assumptions and practices of narrative therapy through a lens of LGBTQ awareness and social justice action.
Watch our Introduction!
Here is a brief introduction by Charley Lang:
Lesson Descriptions
Lesson One: Setting the Stage/Guilding Values
We start by questioning the dominant idea that there are only two genders and that sex should always be congruent with gender, addressing the concept of fluid sexualities and sexual orientations. We identify numerous assumptions that ground us in the work as narrative practitioners, and deconstruct the marginalizing concept of “normal”. The lesson ends with a real-life narrative conversation charting the history of personal empowerment in the face of adversities common to many queer-identified individuals.
Guided by: Charley Lang, with a focus on the works of Mary Heath, Julie Tilsen, and David Nylund
Lesson Two: A Queer Umbrella for All
This lesson clarifies the use of externalizing language when working with LGBTQ clients, providing a real-life case example of narrative practices in action, addressing a gay man as the expert on his own life. We then venture into a group therapy context, providing numerous examples of narrative questions that help construct empowering experiences of community. We end with an award-winning film that documents remarkable community resourcefulness in the face of devastating challenges and loss.
Guided by: Charley Lang with a focus on the works of Chris Behan and Eric Schiff
Lesson Three: Engaging Fluid Practices
Through text, video, and audio, we explore what we mean by engaging in fluid Narrative Therapy practices. We highlight the work of a gay phone switchboard in Australia available for any queer-identified clients seeking support and community. After that, there’s a live interview with Vivian, a transgender woman, to see what narrative practices can actually look like in real-time.
Guided by Charley Lang, with a focus on the works of Charles Jasper and Susan Saltzburg
Lesson Four: Deconstructing Dominant Discourses
Lesson four starts with an exercise to understand deconstructing discourses. We explore toxic masculinity through a video on the film Moonlight. The lesson also discusses the intersection of culture, family values, and sexuality in the article ‘A Woman of Culture’, and challenges popular discourse on trauma treatment in Charley Lang’s article ‘Narrative Therapy Approaches in the Treatment of Trauma.”
Guided by Charley Lang, with a focus on the works of Jesse Green and Kathy Labriola
Lesson Five: Privileging Voices from the Margins
This lesson gives voice to unique experiences of transgender and bisexual individuals, followed by an exercise emphasizing the importance of resourcefulness in the face of sexual identity oppression. We end with an award-winning film, documenting the experiences of gay and lesbian law enforcement officers from across the United States.
Guided by Charley Lang, with a focus on the works of Jesse Green and Kathy Labriola
Lesson Six: Working with Queer Couples
This lesson gives voice to unique experiences of transgender and bisexual individuals, followed by an exercise emphasizing the importance of resourcefulness in the face of sexual identity oppression. We end with an award-winning film, documenting the experiences of gay and lesbian law enforcement officers from across the United States.
Guided by Charley Lang, with a focus on the works of Jesse Green and Kathy Labriola
Lesson Seven: Reflections, Takeaways and CE Credit
This lesson gives voice to unique experiences of transgender and bisexual individuals, followed by an exercise emphasizing the importance of resourcefulness in the face of sexual identity oppression. We end with an award-winning film, documenting the experiences of gay and lesbian law enforcement officers from across the United States.