Janice K. Haaken, Ph.D., Professor Emeritus, Community and Clinical Psychology
Biography Statement
Jan Haaken is professor of psychology at Portland State University, a clinical and community psychologist, a documentary filmmaker, and social justice activist. Haaken has published extensively in the areas of psychoanalysis and feminism, gender and the history of psychiatric diagnosis, group responses to violence and trauma, the psychology of storytelling, and processes of social change. Her research is based on video ethnography, discourse analysis, and social action research methods. She is author of Pillar of Salt: Gender, Memory, and the Perils of Looking Back (1998) and Hard Knocks: Domestic Violence and the Psychology of Storytelling (2010). She is co-author of Speaking Out: Women, War and the Global Economy (2005) and co-editor (2010) of Memory Matters: Understanding Recollections of Sexual Abuse and author of Her films include Diamonds, Guns, and Rice (Co-director, co-producer), Queens of Heart: Community Therapists in Drag (Director), and Moving to the Beat (Producer). Currently she is completing Guilty Except for Insanity, a documentary film on patients who enter the Oregon State Hospital through the insanity defense.
Professor Haaken is Chair of the Board and Executive Committee member of the Walk of the Heroines, an educational park on the Portland State University campus. She serves on the editorial board of Psychoanalysis, Culture & Society, Psychotherapy and Politics International, and on the board of the Association for Psychoanalysis, Culture and Society. She also co-produces The Old Mole Variety Hour, a public affairs program on KBOO Portland Community Radio.

