Roger Frie

Professor
Clinical Psychologist
Faculty of Education

Biography

Roger Frie holds two doctorates, one in psychology (PsyD) and the other in history and social philosophy (PhD). He was educated in London and Cambridge, England, and in New York, and his academic career bridges psychology and the humanities. He has held university appointments in each of these areas. Before coming to SFU in 2008, he taught at Harvard, Columbia, The New School, Northeastern, and Long Island Universities.

He is Professor of Education at Simon Fraser University and Affiliate Professor of Psychiatry at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. He is also faculty and supervisor at the William Alanson White Institute of Psychiatry, Psychoanalysis and Psychology and associate member of the Columbia University Seminar on Cultural Memory in New York. Additionally, he is a clinical psychologist (RPsych) in private practice and provides supervision for a range of mental health professionals.

Research Areas

Historical Trauma, Cultural Memory and Moral Responsibility related to Racial Violence, Genocide and the Holocaust: I use a variety of sources that include interviews, narrative studies, autobiography and family memoir. See for example Not in My Family: German Memory and Responsibility after the Holocaust (Oxford University Press, 2017) and History Flows Through Us: Germany, the Holocaust and the Importance of Empathy (Routledge, 2018). My new book project is entitled: Silencing and Responsibility: Legacies of Racial Violence and Genocide.

Podcast Interview

Discussing Not in My Family: German Memory and Responsibility After the Holocaust. New Books Network, January 2018.  

To listen download the MP3 below.

Psychoanalysis and Social Theory: with particular emphasis on the importance of interdisciplinary traditions for understanding the role of society, culture, politics, gender and race in psychotherapy. See for example Culture, Politics and Race in the Making of Interpersonal Psychoanalysis: Breaking Boundaries (Routledge, 2022). Additionally, I have produced a range of studies that examine the work of interdisciplinary clinicians and scholars. My latest book is entitled: Edge of Catastrophe: Erich Fromm and the Holocaust (currently in press).

Phenomenology, Hermeneutics and Psychological Agency: I have published numerous studies in the areas of the phenomenology of lived experience, embodiment, hermeneutics, intersubjectivity and theories of love, as well as possibilities for political action and psychological agency. I am particularly interested in the ways we are consciously and unconsciously shaped by society and culture and how we respond to our contexts. See for example Psychological Agency: Theory, Practice and Culture (MIT Press, 2008); Psychotherapy as a Human Science (Duquesne University Press, 2006); and Subjectivity and Intersubjectivity in Psychoanalysis and Modern Philosophy (Rowman and Littlefield, 1997).

Teaching

Courses

Future courses may be subject to change.