Charla R. Malamed

Biography

Charla R. Malamed (they/them) is a licensed independent social worker and a published author in the fields of gender expansiveness studies; racial identity and whiteness in clinical work; and antiracism (or lack thereof) in psychoanalytic training institutions. They attended the Smith College School for Social Work and completed their internships at UMass Amherst in Western Massachusetts (working with undergraduate and graduate students) and Venice Family Clinic in Los Angeles (working with adolescents and emerging adults). They also completed a postgraduate fellowship in psychodynamic psychotherapy at Cambridge Health Alliance/Harvard Medical School, where they counseled young adults as well as adult individuals and couples. They were an American Psychoanalytic Association Fellow in 2020-21. 

Charla’s clinical work is guided by psychodynamic principles — the idea that our behaviors and relationships with ourselves and others are guided by non-conscious dynamics stemming from early relational experience — and is complimented by Internal Family Systems approaches, somatic psychotherapy, and mindfulness-based principles and interventions. Their work is attachment-focused, trauma-informed, community-based and social justice–oriented. Their clinical interests include the relationship between the intersection of identities, the ways in which we are embedded in community and society, and the ways in which we relate to ourselves and others. Charla identifies as queer; white; having an invisible disability; first-generation; rising middle-class; Jewish and Buddhist; and Southern Californian and South African.