Judith V. Jordan, Ph.D.
Director of the Jean Baker Miller Training Institute
In addition to her position at WCW, Judy is an assistant professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. After graduating phi beta kappa and magna cum laude from Brown University, she earned her Ph.D. in clinical psychology at Harvard University where she received commendation for outstanding academic performance. She was the director of Psychology Training as well as the director of the Women's Studies program at McLean Hospital. For the past 20 years she has worked with her colleagues, the late Jean Baker Miller, the late Irene Stiver, and Jan Surrey on the development of what has come to be known as the relational-cultural model of women's development.
Judy co-authored the book Women's Growth in Connection and edited Women's Growth in Diversity and The Complexity of Connection. She has published over forty original reports (many as works in progress at the Stone Center) and twenty-five chapters, and been co-author for three books. She is the recipient of the Massachusetts Psychology Association's Career Achievement Award for Outstanding Contributions to the Advancement of Psychology as a Science and a Profession. She was also selected as the Mary Margaret Voorhees Distinguished Professor at the Menninger School of Psychiatry and Mental Health Science in the Spring of 1999. She received the annual psychiatric resident's "outstanding teacher of the year" award at McLean Hospital and is included in Who's Who in America. She was awarded an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from New England College (2001) with "utmost admiration for her contribution to science and the practice of psychology." Dr. Jordan also received a Special Award from the Feminist Therapy Institute "in recognition of outstanding contributions to the development of feminist psychology" (2002). She is on the editorial board of the Journal of Clinical Psychology: In Session and the Journal of Creativity and Mental Health. She has written, lectured, and conducted workshops nationally and internationally on the subjects of women's psychological development, gender differences, mothers and daughters, mothers and sons, empathy, psychotherapy, marginality, diversity, mutuality, courage, competence and connection, women's sexuality, gender issues in the workplace, relational practice in the workplace, new models of leadership, traumatic disconnections, conflict and competition, and a relational model of self. Judy frequently serves as a resource for the press on these issues and has appeared on the Oprah Winfrey show.
Judy has a passion for and strong sense of mission about the work she does at WCW. She strongly believes the existing structures of psychology characterized by a separate-self model of development are destructive to women and to the fabric of community for all people. By carefully studying women's lives and women's struggles, she hopes to help create new models of human development which might transform some of the current distorting impact of competition, hyper-individualism, racism, sexism, heterosexism, and classism. She feels extremely fortunate to have many wonderful colleagues at WCW to help create these new models and new applications. While most of her early work arose in the context of the practice of psychotherapy, increasingly she is applying this work to organizations and to making social change. This work gives her hope and purpose.
Books Judy would recommend:
The Healing Connection by Jean Baker Miller and Irene Stiver
Women's Growth in Connection by Judith Jordan, et al.
Feminist theory: From margin to center by bell hooks
