Sin Fronteras: A Community Psychoanalytic Initiative

Overview

The Community Clinical Work Track offers Spanish-speaking psychotherapists an opportunity to participate in shelter-embedded mental health services serving immigrant communities in Austin.

This model integrates brief, trauma-informed clinical care within a partner shelter setting, emphasizing accessibility, dignity, and cultural responsiveness.

Clinical Role

Participating clinicians may provide:

• Brief individual stabilization sessions

• Psychoeducational and nervous system regulation groups

• Short-term trauma-informed support

• Immigration mental health evaluations (as appropriate)

Care is structured, time-limited, and grounded in the practical realities of shelter-based work.

Supervision & Training

Clinicians participating in the Initiative have access to:

• Structured group supervision

• Case consultation specific to shelter-based care

• Foundational training in community psychodynamic psychotherapy

The training component introduces:

• Brief psychodynamic work in high-stress contexts

• Containment and boundary setting in unstable environments

• Working with migration trauma and displacement

• Cultural and linguistic attunement within community systems

This is not a formal psychoanalytic training program. It is a practical orientation to applying psychodynamic thinking within community-based care.

Psychodynamic Lens

The initiative incorporates a psychodynamic lens as a framework for understanding patients’ internal worlds, relational patterns, trauma histories, and unconscious processes that may emerge even in brief encounters.

This lens broadens clinical thinking and expands intervention possibilities. It does not dictate a specific modality or require a particular theoretical allegiance. Rather, it offers a depth-oriented perspective that can coexist with diverse clinical orientations while supporting reflective, attuned, and ethically grounded care.

Ethical Frame

This work is grounded in a community-informed psychoanalytic ethic that attends to both individual experience and systemic realities. Clinical care within shelter settings requires awareness of relational dynamics, institutional context, and the sociopolitical forces shaping migration and displacement.

We approach this work with humility, attention to power asymmetries, and sensitivity to transference–countertransference processes that arise in high-intensity environments. Ethical practice includes clear boundaries, structured supervision, and ongoing reflection to support clinicians in responsibly containing community-level trauma.

Commitment Structure

Flexible involvement options may include:

• Monthly clinical participation

• Time-limited pilot engagement

• Immigration evaluation track only

• Consultation and reflective participation

Specific structure is clarified during orientation meetings.

Learn More / Express Interest

If you are interested in learning more about the Community Clinical Work Initiative, please complete the interest form below.