ORDINARY LIFE THERAPY
Carina Håkansson is a psychotherapist and manager at Family Care Foundation in Gothenburg, Sweden, which was founded in 1987. Many of the Foundation’s clients live with farm families, with the thought that this “ordinary life” provides a place and knowledge that can be quite helpful and create “new possibilities.” The Foundation avoids the use of psychiatric diagnoses, and its therapists and staff seek to work in a close collaboration with the “ordinary people” in its programs. Carina has written several articles and two books. The latest, Ordinary Life Therapy: Experiences from a Systematic Collaborative Practice, was published in 2009. Her latest article, “Cut Out Doll Woods,” was published in the journal Psychosis, and explores what it is like to “be with” a person who is experiencing terror.
Carina is interested in understanding the way people meet in “professional contexts,” and why the knowledge present in everyday life is often missing from those professional contexts. She travels widely and is hoping to correspond with others in the international community involved in creating new possibilities in mental health care.
