Article archive / December 1, 2013
Originally published: . Volume 5, No. 4. Source pages: 1, 6.
Lifetime Achievement LGPS Honors Dr. Sue Jensen
The Louisiana Group Psychotherapy Society has honored Baton Rouge psychologist, Dr. Susanne Jensen, with their Lifetime Achieve- ment Award, presented at the November 2 Fall Institute of the Society. This is the first award of its kind from the organization, an affiliate of the American Group Psychotherapy Association.
Jensen has been a key figure in the psychology and psychotherapy community, providing training for hundreds of psychotherapists from psychology, psychiatry, social work, and counseling in Louisiana as well as in the national and international settings.
She has lectured in Germany, Austria, Russia, Argentina, China, and Australia, on the two, intertwined theoretical interests that have marked her career: the psychology of women, and the psychology of groups, she explained to the Times in a recent interview.
Among her many and varied teaching and professional roles, she has served as Associate Clinical Director and then as Clinical Director of the Louisiana State University (LSU) Counseling and Mental Health Services on the Baton Rouge campus, and as Adjunct Associate Professor of Clinical Psychology at LSU, from the late 1960s to the early 1990s.
She has also held a faculty position for Fielding Institute, worked in private practice, served as President of the Louisiana Group Psychotherapy Society, served as board member for the American Group Psychotherapy Association, and served as Vice President for North America for the World Council for Psychotherapy.
Jensen co-founded “The Phone,” now called the Baton Rouge Crisis Intervention Center, she served on the steering committee for Faculty and Staff Human Development Group at LSU, and served on the Board of Directors for the Baton Rouge Catholic Social Services.
A native of Germany, Jensen came to the US on a Fulbright Scholarship to the Norfolk State Hospital in Norfolk, Nebraska, then received a grant from the La. State Department of Hospital Training and Research, and served as an instructor at Tulane University School of Medicine. She completed her undergraduate, masters, and doctorate in clinical psychology from the University of Bonn, in Rhein, West Germany.
Much of her work has been guided by her interest in the psychosocial roles of women, she explained. “It was really touching to me when I was in Russia and spoke with women obstetricians and gynecologists at the Institute in St. Petersburg,” Jensen said. “I had the same conversation in China and in Argentina. Women hold the family together, they are in charge of food, relationships, they work 70- hour weeks. Maybe not as much in the current generation, but in the generation before, this was typical for women around the world.”
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