Today’s faculty highlight is Dr. O’Donnell Day, Associate Professor of Counseling Psychology at The Seattle School. Dr. Day is originally from north Mississippi, spending most of her young adulthood living on a family farm in Mississippi. After completing her bachelor’s degree from Mississippi State University, she joined staff with Campus Crusade for Christ on the campus of the University of Minnesota. She holds an MA in Clinical Psychology from California Graduate Institute in Los Angeles, a PhD in Clinical Psychology from Seattle Pacific University, and a post-graduate certificate in British Object Relations Psychotherapy through the Center for Object Relations in Seattle. Currently, she is on the board and faculty at the Center for Object Relations.

She is a licensed Mental Health Counselor and licensed Clinical Psychologist, currently in private practice in Kirkland, and previous Director of Clinical Training at Fairfax Psychiatric Hospital, where she provided supervision for doctoral practicum students and interns. She has extensive experience with acute, long-term inpatient and outpatient clinical populations.

Some of her clinical interests are in the areas of “no emotional mother (Jim Oakland),” and the impacts of this on self-esteem, shame, and primitive emotional states. Also, she is interested in the growth of our minds (different than our brain), narcissism at the heart of all dis-orders, characterological unconscious defensive structures, how these defensive patterns also drive clinical syndromes, sufferings due to our condemning superego, and unconscious processes which lead to a personal theology.

What are you currently reading?

The Seattle Times
The New York Times
On Learning from the Patient, Patrick Casement.
Internal Racism by M. Fakhry Davids.
Racist States of Mind by Narendra Keval.
Thinking Space by Frank Lowe.
Coming to Life in the Consulting Room by Thomas Ogden.

What have you been listening to lately?

NPR, daily
The NewsHour
Sunday Morning with Jane Pauley
Tennis
The birds in my backyard.
My patients.
My own mind…

What research do you find yourself drawn to at the moment?

An ongoing deepening of my relationship to my experiences in growing up in the South.

Any summer plans?

Gardening.
Staying at home.

If you could have dinner with any person, dead or alive, who would they be?

My mom.

If you weren’t in your current profession you’d be…?

I love my work and therefore don’t want to be doing anything different, however if I had to choose, perhaps working with a dual MDiv degree and a P.A. overseas with an organization such as Doctors Without Borders.

Who is your literary or living hero?

People who are honest, and work with their emotional experiences, honestly so.