The Voice from the Shelf: 20 Years after the Smith Master’s Thesis

ABSTRACT

I have spent my professional life as a clinician and university instructor in divergent but connected roles, with one specific and recognizable aim: to facilitate the discovery of voice and insight in others that comes from opening dialogue and creating cohesion between our different selves—public and private, or professional and personal. It was only recently that I realized, quite unexpectedly, that my master’s thesis was the prerequisite for this unspoken and repeated effort and that my relationship with my thesis advisor provided a model for how to bring forth such awareness. Now, 20 years later, I see myself engaged in a similar process in all aspects of my life. The Smith thesis was my initiation to this articulation, in print, of my personal and academic selves. As a tribute to the final tour of the Smith College School for Social Work master’s thesis, and its farewell, I would like to tell this story.

KEYWORDS:

• Master’s thesis
• finding and facilitating voice
• personal and professional
• public and private
• sexual abuse
• writing
• therapeutic process
• education
• mentorship

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Banu F. Hummel

Banu F. Hummel, MSW, a 1997 graduate of Smith College School for Social Work, is a university instructor in the Psychology Department at Istanbul Bilgi University in Turkey, where she also had a small private practice working with individuals, couples, and families.