Wendy Phillips

Wendy Phillips, Ph.D. is a psychologist, psychotherapist, researcher, and a practicing visual artist. She is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist. Her work is also informed by principles of Depth Psychology, and she has found that depth perspectives provide an excellent frame for her ethnographic research. Her clinical interests include culturally relevant psychotherapy, culturally informed conceptualizations of mental illness, group work, the ritual as a psychotherapeutic intervention, dream work in groups, and Expressive Arts Therapy. She likes to experiment with the use of art materials and creative processes in psychotherapy.

   Wendy’s research interests include the metaphysical beliefs and traditional healing practices of women of African and North American indigenous descent. Her research project along La Costa Chica of the Pacific coast of Mexico combines phenomenological interviews with photographic processes. She has recently published papers on healing rituals related to beliefs in totem animals and on the archetypal conservation of a deity from the Yoruba religious pantheon in the Afromestizocommunities of Mexico. She is interested in traditional indigenous African religious systems such as the Yoruba and Vodun.She is also interested in hip hop music and culture and possible references to traditional indigenous African ritual practices and archetypes.

     Wendy’s artwork has been exhibited widely, including “La Sombra y el Espiritu,” a two-person exhibit in collaboration with the Dominican painter Lucia Mendez, at the Sonja Haynes Stone Center for Black Culture and History at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; “La Limpia,” in Conjunction with the Festival Afrocaribeno, Fototeca Juan Malpica Mimende, Instituto Veracruzano de la Cultura, in the Puerto de Veracruz, Mexico; and at the Museum of the African Diaspora in San Francisco.

    Visit her website at www.diasporacitizen.com