Alexis Arczynski

Dr. Alexis V. Arczynski (they/them/theirs) completed their Ph.D. in Counseling Psychology at the University of Utah in 2014, a post-doctoral fellowship at the University of Tennessee’s Student Counseling Center, and a psychology internship at the University of Oregon’s Counseling and Testing Center. They obtained an M.S. in Counseling from California State University, Fullerton, in 2007. As a marriage and family therapy intern, Dr. Arczynski provided psychological, consultation, and advocacy services to foster children and their foster families in Los Angeles County. Before that, they conducted school-based counseling services for adolescents in San Bernardino County. Professionally, they have worked as core faculty at Antioch University Los Angeles in the Master of Clinical Psychology Program, a staff psychologist at the University of Utah’s Counseling Center, and core faculty in the Counseling Psychology Doctoral Program at the University of Oklahoma. Dr. Arczynski’s areas of specialization and interest include developing ways of being that enable survivance, resilience, and resistance within power-laden contexts. They are a licensed psychologist (UT) designated core faculty in the Clinical Psychology Psy.D. program.

Broadly speaking, I seek to transform applied psychology to embody multicultural social justice. With this ambitious goal in mind, three themes underlie my research program: I examine how practitioners engage in multicultural and empowerment-based practices, explain how people navigate power-laden contexts, and explore how people promote social justice. Three streams emerge from my overarching agenda: explaining socially just supervision relationships and practice, infusing social justice into undergraduate and graduate training, and exploring the career adjustment experiences of queer early career psychologists with diverse identities. For example, I employed a grounded theory design and data analytic procedures to construct a substantive conceptual model that explained how self-identified feminist multicultural (FMC) psychotherapy supervisors conceptualized and practiced supervision. Therefore, my research interests include socially just supervision and training provision; contextual awareness, resilience, and resistance to systemic and interpersonal oppression; and managing complex power relations in personal, professional, and political relationships. I utilize qualitative research to approach my interests, particularly critical-ideological grounded theory and participatory action methods.

The commitment to multicultural social justice that underlies my research is a springboard for my pedagogical approach. Thereby, I acknowledge that truth is subjective, emerges from social interaction, and is embedded in a socially and historically constructed reality rife with oppression and power imbalances. My teaching approach emerges from a feminist multicultural pedagogical foundation. I seek to anticipate and manage classroom power dynamics, be collaborative and transparent with students, encourage reflexivity of biases and assumptions, and attune to context implications. Regardless of the class, I promote the fulfillment of three goals to develop (a) active, empowered learners; (b) critical consciousness; and (c) skills to apply classroom-based knowledge for the benefit of our broader world. I leverage experiential, reflective, and dialogic methods to reach these goals. Students can anticipate that I will give them detailed constructive feedback to support them in expanding their awareness, knowledge, and skills and solicit their feedback to enable a collaborative and transformative learning community.

I approach clinical practice through a critical multicultural feminist lens. I specialize in working with clients who have trauma histories (e.g., interpersonal trauma; insidious trauma; complex trauma); identify with marginalized and oppressed groups (e.g., gender and sexual minorities, women, persons of color, persons with disabilities, persons of poverty); and are in gender transition. As such, I seek to help clients contextualize their experiences, develop resilience and surveillance in response to traumatizing contexts, and enable resistance towards power-laden experiences leveraging individual, relational, psycho-educational, and group modalities. To match the needs of diverse clients and their presenting concerns, I frequently provide interventions using political analysis, interpersonal-process, mindful self-compassion, cognitive-behavioral, dialectical-behavioral, and emotion-focused approaches.