Profile
Karin Macke (born Seidner)
Birth:
1963
Training Location(s):
Mag., University of Vienna
Primary Affiliation(s):
Association Station Vienna
Association Sprachraum - Academy for Text and Therapy
grauenfruppe - collective of female authors, literary performances
Association for Person-Centered Psychotherapy (APG)
Institute for Person-Centered Studies (APG.IPS)
Graduate course "Psychotherapeutic Propädeutikum”, University of Vienna
Women* counsel women* and the affiliated Institute for Feminist Psychotherapy
Private practice
Graz Association of Authors (GAV)
Career Focus:
Feminist counseling, person-centered psychotherapy, supervision, coaching, ethics and gender, psychotherapy and power issues, professional literature, writing pedagogy, literary texts
Biography
Karin Macke is a feminist counselor at the women's counseling center Women* counsel Women*, psychotherapist and supervisor in private practice, trainer at the Institute for Person-Centered Studies and Psychotherapy, editor and author of academic publications and literary texts, creative writing workshop leader, co-founder of the association Sprachraum, member of the authors' collective grauenfruppe and performer. Macke’s work therby is informed by her feminist political beliefs as by personal experiences. In her private life, Macke is married and has three sons and a stepdaughter.
Karin Macke was born Karin Seidner in Vienna in 1963 and knew already at the age of 6 what she certainly never wanted to become: a woman (financially) dependent on a man. On her first visit to the cinema, "My Fair Lady", she was stunned by the fact that in the film the young fair woman subordinated herself to an arrogant upper class professor and even married him voluntarily. The situation in Macke's family was quite different: her younger brother and her mother, a migrant from Transylvania, Romania, were unable for economic reasons to leave their violent father.
From a legal point of view, it was still possible in Austria until the mid-1970s for the husband, as the legal 'head of the family', to forbid his wife to work independently. The divorce of Macke's parents therefore did not take place until the beginning of the 1980s, when as a result of the family law reform (mid-1970s in Austria) mother and children were entitled to maintenance in the case of a non-consensual separation.
Even as an elementary school student, Macke experienced the inequalities between the sexes as incomprehensible and irritating. At first it looked as if she would not be able to go to the secondary school she had chosen, as until the early 1970s only boys were admitted to this school. Shortly before her transfer to the Allgemeinbildende höhere Schule (AHS; Austrian high school), coeducational schooling was facilitated and Macke achieved her goal: she took the Matura [note E.R.: High School Degree] at the AHS Wohlmutstraße (later Sigmund-Freud-Gymnasium) in one of the first gender "mixed" courses.
Although Macke had already read texts by the well-known German feminist Alice Schwarzer in the upper grades of her high school, she only began to act in a consciously feminist and actionist way when she was a diploma student of German and English studies. She founded a women's group, read and discussed feminist texts, and protested with her comrades against sexist advertising. During one of these actions, the activists painted over sexist posters of the Toshiba company with women's signs, were arrested and had to spend the night in jail.
The young feminist was outraged and angry about the disproportionate nature of conviction and punishment in the contrast of property damage and domestic violence in the Austrian justice system. After all, despite official medical reports of injuries to her mother and herself by her violent father in her youth, her father had always gone unpunished, an irony juxtaposed with her own official prosecution following the poster campaign. She recalls: "Nothing happened to my father, and I, because I beautified a few posters with women's signs, suddenly had to pay thousands of shillings."
Macke wanted to become a writer, but the study of creative writing did not yet exist in Austria. With a scholarship from the School of Poetry in Vienna, of which she was a member from the beginning, she studied Creative Writing for a semester in North America at Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado (with Allen Ginsberg and Anne Waldman, among others). Back in Austria, she attended further writing workshops, became a trained writing workshop leader and, together with other authors and therapists, founded the association Sprachraum, an Academy for Creative Writing and Poetry Therapy.
Her interest in people and their personal background stories, as well as in her own therapy, led Macke to the decision to become a therapist herself. From Macke’s point of view, her own feminist attitude combined well with the approach of person-centered psychotherapy according to Carl Rogers. Macke began her training together with the feminists Renata Fuchs and Marietta Winkler at the Association for Person-Centered Psychotherapy, where she once more founded a women's group, and remained in contact with her companions for many years.
Karin Macke describes her professional path as an "organic career". She combined her training (therapy, studies) with her other interests (writing, traveling) to form two professional pillars: therapy and writing. She remained financially independent by working in a wide variety of fields, which included teaching predominantly Turkish-speaking women German as a second language and literacy at both the Professional Development Institute Vienna (BFI) and in the Station Vienna Association, which she co-founded in 1997 and which still exists today.
Toward the end of her studies, she married and had three sons. Macke completed her studies with a thesis on Austrian-born holocaust survivor Elfriede Gerstl and her therapy training with a paper titled "Is the person also female?" on the concept of "person" in Carl Rogers work. By taking a feminist approach to the topic, the developing therapist made it clear that even the founder of person-centered therapy school takes a thoroughly masculine view of "the client" in his writings – a work which remains pioneering to this day.
Macke completed her psychotherapy practice hours at Women* counsel women* where, although she had little experience in the counseling scene, she secured a position as a feminist counselor due to her experience as an author, feminist activist and PR woman in her own right. Soon she was offering writing workshops for "therapeutic writing" and, together with colleagues, initiating groups on socially relevant topics, including "women 50+" and "rebellious women over 50."
Karin Macke, who says of herself: "I cannot act apolitically at all", established together with other feminist colleagues in her training association the course "Ethics and Gender" in the curriculum of the Institute for Person-Centered Studies and Psychotherapy. Together with a colleague from the same program, she organized a series called "Person and Society,” which included seminars on topics such as "Age Discrimination", "Language and Psychotherapy", "Power and Psychotherapy", "Diagnosis and Gender", "Transgenerational Passing on of War Experiences" or "Psychotherapy and Class", amongst others.
Asked about the current situation of women in Austria, Macke notes there is both progress and regression in the women's movement, and that the issue of violence against women is unfortunately just as relevant as it was 45 years ago. Nevertheless, she sums up that the legal situation for women has improved significantly, also offers her thanks to Johanna Dohnal [note E.R: Austria's first Minister for Women]. As part of the women's movement - the only movement that, according to Macke, can also achieve something internationally - she appeals to (younger) women to show solidarity, to establish groups in order to exchange ideas, to network and to counteract the increasing de-solidarization caused by the neoliberal culture of competition.
In 1996, she also founded the women’s creative writing collective grauenfruppe with three other authors and has since written and performed regularly in this award-winning formation.
In graunfruppe, under her birth name Karin Seidner, Macke demonstrates the importance of spreading joy and having fun in life despite everything, as well as not losing one's sense of humor. When they won a literature prize dedicated to individuals together and outed themselves as a writing collective at the award ceremony, jurors and competitors were not at all thrilled about the rule-breaking. Many years later, the unorthodox quartet then initiated its own event to mark its 25th anniversary, at which only collectives were to compete.Those who were not (yet) part of a collective founded one and had the experience of having great fun working together.
As a specialist author and co-editor of the anniversary volumes of the counseling center Women* counsel women*, on the occasion of its 30th and 40th anniversary, it was important to Macke and her co-editors to vividly reflect the diverse feminist approaches and perspectives on feminist counseling and psychotherapy. These anthologies resulted in the volumes "In Recognition of the Difference. Feminist Counseling and Psychotherapy" (2010) and "Freedom and Feminisms. Feminist Counseling and Psychotherapy" (2020).
Karin Macke sees colleagues who accompanied her on her professional path as mentors, just as she sees her mother – a strong woman who always stood by her daughter, but experienced little support herself as a young woman and mother. As a staff member at Women* Counsel Women*, therapist and daughter, Macke therefore says: "I would have wished my mother to have [exactly] such a place where she could have found support."
By Emelie Rack & Susanne Hahnl (2023)
To cite this article, see Credits
Selected Works
By Karin Macke
Frauen* beraten Frauen* (Ed.) (2010). In Anerkennung der Differenz. Feministische Beratung und Psychotherapie (Therapie & Beratung). Psychosozial-Verlag.
Frauen* beraten Frauen*. (2016). Bissige Geschichten. Feminismen, Humor und Widerstand. aep informationen, 4.
Frauen* beraten Frauen* (Ed.) (2020). Freiheit und Feminismen: Feministische Beratung und Psychotherapie (Therapie & Beratung). Psychosozial-Verlag. https://doi.org/10.30820/97838...
Macke, K. (2010a). Ich hab mehrere Standbeine. In T. Ebermann, J. Fritz, B. Zehetner & Frauen* beraten Frauen* (Eds.), In Anerkennung der Differenz Feministische Beratung und Psychotherapie. Psychosozial-Verlag.
Macke, K. (2010b). Ist die Person auch weiblich? Ein Plädoyer für mehr Geschlechtersensibilität und gendergerechte Sprache in der personzentrierten Psychotherapie [Theses Psychotherapy].
Macke, K. (2012). literatur und sammeln entspringt einem mangel“- Zur Text(ilen)- Verarbeitung zentraler Themen im Gedicht Kleiderflug oder lost clothes von Elfriede Gerstl: „wer ist denn schon zu hause bei sich. Profile, 19.
Macke, K. (2017). Sexuelle Übergriffe in der Psychotherapie. ÖBVP (Ed.), Sexueller Missbrauch in der Psychotherapie. News Sonderausgabe.
Macke, K., & Bergsmann, U. (2012). Schreiben zwischen den Welten. Kreatives und poesietherapeutisches Schreiben. Ein Plädoyer für emotionalen Zweitspracherwerb und Persönlichkeitsentwicklung im DaF-Unterricht. ÖDaF-Mitteilungen zum Thema „Schreiben“, 2.
Macke, K., & Hasler, G. (2011). Die Zukunft der Psychotherapie - Entwicklung von Visionen einer humaneren Gesellschaft als notwendige Aufgabe von PsychotherapeutInnen. WLP News, 4, 21.
Macke, K., & Hasler, G. (2012). Braucht Psychotherapie geschlechterdifferentes Wissen?. WLP News: Schwerpunkt Gender, 1.
Macke, K., & Hasler, G. (2019). Why should person-centered facilitating be gendersensitive? Person-centered and experiential psychotherapies, 18 (4), 360-366. https://doi.org/10.1080/147797...
Macke, K., & Russo, K. (2012). Der Stellenwert von Sprachsensibilität in der psychotherapeutis chen Theorie. WLP News: Schwerpunkt Gender, 1.
By and about Karin Macke
Macke, K. (2022, May 19). Interview with Susanne Hahnl [Video recording].
Karin Macke (born Seidner)
Birth:
1963
Training Location(s):
Mag., University of Vienna
Primary Affiliation(s):
Association Station Vienna
Association Sprachraum - Academy for Text and Therapy
grauenfruppe - collective of female authors, literary performances
Association for Person-Centered Psychotherapy (APG)
Institute for Person-Centered Studies (APG.IPS)
Graduate course "Psychotherapeutic Propädeutikum”, University of Vienna
Women* counsel women* and the affiliated Institute for Feminist Psychotherapy
Private practice
Graz Association of Authors (GAV)
Career Focus:
Feminist counseling, person-centered psychotherapy, supervision, coaching, ethics and gender, psychotherapy and power issues, professional literature, writing pedagogy, literary texts
Biography
Karin Macke is a feminist counselor at the women's counseling center Women* counsel Women*, psychotherapist and supervisor in private practice, trainer at the Institute for Person-Centered Studies and Psychotherapy, editor and author of academic publications and literary texts, creative writing workshop leader, co-founder of the association Sprachraum, member of the authors' collective grauenfruppe and performer. Macke’s work therby is informed by her feminist political beliefs as by personal experiences. In her private life, Macke is married and has three sons and a stepdaughter.
Karin Macke was born Karin Seidner in Vienna in 1963 and knew already at the age of 6 what she certainly never wanted to become: a woman (financially) dependent on a man. On her first visit to the cinema, "My Fair Lady", she was stunned by the fact that in the film the young fair woman subordinated herself to an arrogant upper class professor and even married him voluntarily. The situation in Macke's family was quite different: her younger brother and her mother, a migrant from Transylvania, Romania, were unable for economic reasons to leave their violent father.
From a legal point of view, it was still possible in Austria until the mid-1970s for the husband, as the legal 'head of the family', to forbid his wife to work independently. The divorce of Macke's parents therefore did not take place until the beginning of the 1980s, when as a result of the family law reform (mid-1970s in Austria) mother and children were entitled to maintenance in the case of a non-consensual separation.
Even as an elementary school student, Macke experienced the inequalities between the sexes as incomprehensible and irritating. At first it looked as if she would not be able to go to the secondary school she had chosen, as until the early 1970s only boys were admitted to this school. Shortly before her transfer to the Allgemeinbildende höhere Schule (AHS; Austrian high school), coeducational schooling was facilitated and Macke achieved her goal: she took the Matura [note E.R.: High School Degree] at the AHS Wohlmutstraße (later Sigmund-Freud-Gymnasium) in one of the first gender "mixed" courses.
Although Macke had already read texts by the well-known German feminist Alice Schwarzer in the upper grades of her high school, she only began to act in a consciously feminist and actionist way when she was a diploma student of German and English studies. She founded a women's group, read and discussed feminist texts, and protested with her comrades against sexist advertising. During one of these actions, the activists painted over sexist posters of the Toshiba company with women's signs, were arrested and had to spend the night in jail.
The young feminist was outraged and angry about the disproportionate nature of conviction and punishment in the contrast of property damage and domestic violence in the Austrian justice system. After all, despite official medical reports of injuries to her mother and herself by her violent father in her youth, her father had always gone unpunished, an irony juxtaposed with her own official prosecution following the poster campaign. She recalls: "Nothing happened to my father, and I, because I beautified a few posters with women's signs, suddenly had to pay thousands of shillings."
Macke wanted to become a writer, but the study of creative writing did not yet exist in Austria. With a scholarship from the School of Poetry in Vienna, of which she was a member from the beginning, she studied Creative Writing for a semester in North America at Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado (with Allen Ginsberg and Anne Waldman, among others). Back in Austria, she attended further writing workshops, became a trained writing workshop leader and, together with other authors and therapists, founded the association Sprachraum, an Academy for Creative Writing and Poetry Therapy.
Her interest in people and their personal background stories, as well as in her own therapy, led Macke to the decision to become a therapist herself. From Macke’s point of view, her own feminist attitude combined well with the approach of person-centered psychotherapy according to Carl Rogers. Macke began her training together with the feminists Renata Fuchs and Marietta Winkler at the Association for Person-Centered Psychotherapy, where she once more founded a women's group, and remained in contact with her companions for many years.
Karin Macke describes her professional path as an "organic career". She combined her training (therapy, studies) with her other interests (writing, traveling) to form two professional pillars: therapy and writing. She remained financially independent by working in a wide variety of fields, which included teaching predominantly Turkish-speaking women German as a second language and literacy at both the Professional Development Institute Vienna (BFI) and in the Station Vienna Association, which she co-founded in 1997 and which still exists today.
Toward the end of her studies, she married and had three sons. Macke completed her studies with a thesis on Austrian-born holocaust survivor Elfriede Gerstl and her therapy training with a paper titled "Is the person also female?" on the concept of "person" in Carl Rogers work. By taking a feminist approach to the topic, the developing therapist made it clear that even the founder of person-centered therapy school takes a thoroughly masculine view of "the client" in his writings – a work which remains pioneering to this day.
Macke completed her psychotherapy practice hours at Women* counsel women* where, although she had little experience in the counseling scene, she secured a position as a feminist counselor due to her experience as an author, feminist activist and PR woman in her own right. Soon she was offering writing workshops for "therapeutic writing" and, together with colleagues, initiating groups on socially relevant topics, including "women 50+" and "rebellious women over 50."
Karin Macke, who says of herself: "I cannot act apolitically at all", established together with other feminist colleagues in her training association the course "Ethics and Gender" in the curriculum of the Institute for Person-Centered Studies and Psychotherapy. Together with a colleague from the same program, she organized a series called "Person and Society,” which included seminars on topics such as "Age Discrimination", "Language and Psychotherapy", "Power and Psychotherapy", "Diagnosis and Gender", "Transgenerational Passing on of War Experiences" or "Psychotherapy and Class", amongst others.
Asked about the current situation of women in Austria, Macke notes there is both progress and regression in the women's movement, and that the issue of violence against women is unfortunately just as relevant as it was 45 years ago. Nevertheless, she sums up that the legal situation for women has improved significantly, also offers her thanks to Johanna Dohnal [note E.R: Austria's first Minister for Women]. As part of the women's movement - the only movement that, according to Macke, can also achieve something internationally - she appeals to (younger) women to show solidarity, to establish groups in order to exchange ideas, to network and to counteract the increasing de-solidarization caused by the neoliberal culture of competition.
In 1996, she also founded the women’s creative writing collective grauenfruppe with three other authors and has since written and performed regularly in this award-winning formation.
In graunfruppe, under her birth name Karin Seidner, Macke demonstrates the importance of spreading joy and having fun in life despite everything, as well as not losing one's sense of humor. When they won a literature prize dedicated to individuals together and outed themselves as a writing collective at the award ceremony, jurors and competitors were not at all thrilled about the rule-breaking. Many years later, the unorthodox quartet then initiated its own event to mark its 25th anniversary, at which only collectives were to compete.Those who were not (yet) part of a collective founded one and had the experience of having great fun working together.
As a specialist author and co-editor of the anniversary volumes of the counseling center Women* counsel women*, on the occasion of its 30th and 40th anniversary, it was important to Macke and her co-editors to vividly reflect the diverse feminist approaches and perspectives on feminist counseling and psychotherapy. These anthologies resulted in the volumes "In Recognition of the Difference. Feminist Counseling and Psychotherapy" (2010) and "Freedom and Feminisms. Feminist Counseling and Psychotherapy" (2020).
Karin Macke sees colleagues who accompanied her on her professional path as mentors, just as she sees her mother – a strong woman who always stood by her daughter, but experienced little support herself as a young woman and mother. As a staff member at Women* Counsel Women*, therapist and daughter, Macke therefore says: "I would have wished my mother to have [exactly] such a place where she could have found support."
By Emelie Rack & Susanne Hahnl (2023)
To cite this article, see Credits
Selected Works
By Karin Macke
Frauen* beraten Frauen* (Ed.) (2010). In Anerkennung der Differenz. Feministische Beratung und Psychotherapie (Therapie & Beratung). Psychosozial-Verlag.
Frauen* beraten Frauen*. (2016). Bissige Geschichten. Feminismen, Humor und Widerstand. aep informationen, 4.
Frauen* beraten Frauen* (Ed.) (2020). Freiheit und Feminismen: Feministische Beratung und Psychotherapie (Therapie & Beratung). Psychosozial-Verlag. https://doi.org/10.30820/97838...
Macke, K. (2010a). Ich hab mehrere Standbeine. In T. Ebermann, J. Fritz, B. Zehetner & Frauen* beraten Frauen* (Eds.), In Anerkennung der Differenz Feministische Beratung und Psychotherapie. Psychosozial-Verlag.
Macke, K. (2010b). Ist die Person auch weiblich? Ein Plädoyer für mehr Geschlechtersensibilität und gendergerechte Sprache in der personzentrierten Psychotherapie [Theses Psychotherapy].
Macke, K. (2012). literatur und sammeln entspringt einem mangel“- Zur Text(ilen)- Verarbeitung zentraler Themen im Gedicht Kleiderflug oder lost clothes von Elfriede Gerstl: „wer ist denn schon zu hause bei sich. Profile, 19.
Macke, K. (2017). Sexuelle Übergriffe in der Psychotherapie. ÖBVP (Ed.), Sexueller Missbrauch in der Psychotherapie. News Sonderausgabe.
Macke, K., & Bergsmann, U. (2012). Schreiben zwischen den Welten. Kreatives und poesietherapeutisches Schreiben. Ein Plädoyer für emotionalen Zweitspracherwerb und Persönlichkeitsentwicklung im DaF-Unterricht. ÖDaF-Mitteilungen zum Thema „Schreiben“, 2.
Macke, K., & Hasler, G. (2011). Die Zukunft der Psychotherapie - Entwicklung von Visionen einer humaneren Gesellschaft als notwendige Aufgabe von PsychotherapeutInnen. WLP News, 4, 21.
Macke, K., & Hasler, G. (2012). Braucht Psychotherapie geschlechterdifferentes Wissen?. WLP News: Schwerpunkt Gender, 1.
Macke, K., & Hasler, G. (2019). Why should person-centered facilitating be gendersensitive? Person-centered and experiential psychotherapies, 18 (4), 360-366. https://doi.org/10.1080/147797...
Macke, K., & Russo, K. (2012). Der Stellenwert von Sprachsensibilität in der psychotherapeutis chen Theorie. WLP News: Schwerpunkt Gender, 1.
By and about Karin Macke
Macke, K. (2022, May 19). Interview with Susanne Hahnl [Video recording].