For our final Faculty Friday update in 2024, please join us in welcoming our newest core faculty member, Dr. Elizabeth (Lizz) Barton! We look forward to getting to know her more in the coming year. To begin, here’s Dr. Barton’s bio and a brief interview from this summer.
Bio: Dr. Barton is a licensed clinical psychologist in the state of Washington. She received her BA in Psychology from Concordia University-Portland, her MA and PhD in Clinical Psychology from Fuller Graduate School of Psychology at Fuller Seminary, and MA in Theology from Fuller Seminary. Dr. Barton has also pursued additional training in Contemporary Analytic Psychology and Neo-Jungian Studies through Pacifica Graduate Institute.
While she has worked in a variety of mental health settings, engaging emerging adults in meaningful therapy and investing in the development, training, and mentoring of the next generation of deeply human and present clinicians have been her passions. Before joining the faculty of The Seattle School in 2024, Dr. Barton served in university counseling centers for 20+ years. She has taught undergraduate courses in psychology and world religions, directed the training program for master’s and doctoral level counseling students at Pacific Lutheran University Counseling Services, and served as the director of the Counseling Center at PLU.
Dr. Barton grew up in rural Washington State with a diverse denominational background and an appreciation for the joys, challenges, and opportunities for navigating the ”in-between” spaces of identities, stories, and communities of belonging. In both her ongoing therapeutic practice and in walking alongside healers in training, Dr. Barton is interested in building capacity to be deeply present to self, other, and world; integrating head and heart knowledge in an embodied way; and facilitating enhanced agency and ownership of one’s own voice.
Beyond work, Dr. Barton believes in the importance of being engaged in community, family life, and connection with the natural world. She teaches courses in her faith community, serves on local neighborhood coalitions that support youth thriving, participates in her church worship band, enjoys board games and meaningful (and ridiculous or fun) conversations with her partner and three children, and can regularly be found basking in God’s creation on local hikes or in National Parks.
What are you currently reading?
I tend to read multiple things at once to satisfy my many interests. Right now, in addition to a lot of policy/procedures and textbooks for The Seattle School, I am:
- Reading Steve Inskeep’s Differ We Must: How Lincoln Succeeded in a Divided America (2023) and reflecting on the deep need in our present reality to engage across and through difference.
- Continuing to explore my interest in Jungian psychology and its applications by reading Joan Chdorow’s 1997 edited collection of writings by Jung: Jung on Active Imagination and the classic Romancing the Shadow: A Guide to Soul Work for a Vital, Authentic Life (Zweig & Wolf, 1999)
- Following up on a recommendation from a spiritual director friend with whom I have shared conversation about the importance of (re)building meaningful connections amongst those in our church communities by reading The Friendship of Women: The Hidden Tradition of the Bible (Chittister, 2006)
- Scratching my historical fiction itch with PNW writer, Kristen Loesch’s The Last Russian Doll (2024) and Adam Ehrlich Sachs genre-bending, mind-tickling Gretel and the Great War (2024)
What have you been listening to lately?
The sounds of birds, water, and the wind in the trees; music by Chopin while working or reading; a variety of lectures from The Great Courses (from literature to history, philosophy, etc – these lectures and Apocalyptica are what I listen to while working out), Lectio 365; the beauty and wildness of a square foot-challenged house of 6 people who all play instruments (yes, there’s a drum set in my “home office”) and are practicing dance, cheer, signing etc., throughout the day.
What did you enjoy this summer?
This past summer I enjoyed hiking in the mountains and drinking in the beauty of North Cascades National Park; having moments of awe and wonder both on family camping trips and in my annual solo retreat; and accompanying my children as they entered into adventures that allowed them new “ahas” – seeing the world with new eyes, deepening their curiosity, and posing challenging questions.
What research or questions do you find yourself drawn to at the moment?
In the past year, I presented at a panel conversation on loneliness. I am captured by the questions of what it is we mean when we talk about an “epidemic of loneliness” and what it is in our culture, environments, and ways of living with one another that is giving rise to alienation from ourselves and each other. What is it that we as psychologists, and those who reflect from theological and spiritual perspectives, have to offer in this regard?
If you could have dinner with any person, dead or alive, who would they be?
Just one? I’d like to cheat on this one. I’d love to grab some Thai food (mangoes and sticky rice compulsory), sit down around a table with Victor Frankl, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Carl Jung, and Steven Hayes, and see where the conversation goes.
If you weren’t in your current profession, you’d be….?
I’ve had the fantasy of opening a bookstore, cafe, third-space of community that hosts opportunities for folks to engage in conversation with one another about topics that we seem to have a hard time entering into with one another right now. Seems challenging… meaningful…exciting…. like I would need to learn some entrepreneurial skills.