Celia Brickman, Ph.D., L.C.P.C., is a Chicago-based psychoanalytic psychotherapist and scholar whose work sits at the intersection of psychoanalysis, race, and religion. She holds institutional affiliations with the Chicago Center for Psychoanalysis and Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy, as well as the Center for Religion & Psychotherapy of Chicago, where she has served as Director of Education.

Brickman is the author of the landmark book 'Aboriginal Populations in the Mind: Primitivity in Psychoanalysis,' later retitled in its second edition as 'Race in Psychoanalysis: Aboriginal Populations in the Mind.' The work examines the intimate concern with race in Freud's writing and the illusory gap dividing White European and non-White subjectivities, bringing post-colonial theory to the unconscious racial assumptions embedded in psychoanalytic thought.

Through her scholarship and clinical practice, Brickman illuminates how colonialist and enslaving histories continue to reverberate within psychoanalytic theory and practice, and advocates for a genuinely critical, multicultural, and racially diverse psychoanalysis. Her office is located in the Hyde Park neighborhood of Chicago.

Specialties

Depth orientation

Psychoanalytic psychotherapy grounded in the study of religion and psychology at the University of Chicago Divinity School. Her scholarly work explores the boundaries of race and religion in psychoanalysis, bringing critical depth to questions of identity, vocation, and spirituality. Her clinical approach engages the spiritual and religious dimensions of human experience within a psychodynamic framework.

Brickman’s approach Preparing for a first session with Brickman
For clinicians and organizations

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