Profile
Sanda Schmidjell
Birth:
1962
Training Location(s):
Mag., University of Zagreb (1987)
Primary Affiliation(s):
Peregrina - Center for Education, Counseling and Therapy of Immigrant Women
Career Focus:
Psychotherapy and Migration
Biography
Sanda Schmidjell is a clinical and health psychologist with a focus on migration and trauma. She is a long-standing employee of the Viennese migrant women's counseling center Peregrina.
Sanda Schmidjell was born on November 13, 1962 as Sanda Muminovic in Banjaluka, Bosnia. She studied psychology in Zagreb and graduated in 1987. After that she began training in transactional analysis and worked as a young psychologist in a hospital in Banjaluka. She remembered the organizational structure there as being strongly hierarchical and masculine – she didn't really feel taken seriously as a psychologist there. Today, Schmidjell, who has been working in a women's team for over 20 years, she can no longer imagine working like that (Schmidjell, 2020, Interview with B. Rothmüller).
Schmidjell came to Austria in 1997. One and a half years later, in 1999, she became a psychological counselor at Peregrina. This position was created through an aid project initiated by the counseling center to provide psychological support to women who had fled to Austria during the Bosnian war of 1992-1995. Due to the need that became apparent, the project became an integral part of the counseling center and Schmidjell also continued her work at Peregrina.
Starting with a basic knowledge of German and little work experience in Austria, Schmidjell acquired an enormous amount of knowledge over the years. She learned through self-study, practical work, and also from the clients themselves, for whom she feels both empathy and admiration. And Peregrina also continued to develop: today the counseling center with its multi-professional and multilingual women's team of social workers, lawyers, German teachers, and psychologists is an important contact point for migrant women in Vienna. It is not always easy: Peregrina women have to be persistent in their dealings with politicians and authorities in order to guarantee the existence of the counseling center, especially financially. Sanda Schmidjell does not regret these efforts, however, as she explains with a laugh: "I’ve been working at Peregrina since I came to Vienna and I think it is a good thing" (Schmidjell, 2020, Interview with B. Rothmüller).
In her therapeutic approach, a client- and contract-oriented work style is important to her, in which the client is seen as an equal partner. Due to the frequent multiple burdens on migrant women (e.g. residence, work, partnership, children) it is important for Schmidjell to focus therapeutic work concretely on the women's life reality, since "psychologizing" or working on the meta-level is sometimes not very helpful in these situations. An important keyword to characterize Schmidjell's work is reflection. When dealing with clients it is essential to consider individual socialisation and experience in order to meet the client's needs. This is a claim of Peregrina: The counselor should adapt to the needs of the client and not vice versa. Schmidjell is also influenced by her own experience of migration: "It is also important to know and to reflect that I am a migrant but that my experiences may be different from those of my clients. . . This is also a constant reflection: How have I been socialized, how has this client been socialized, is my experience considered a universal migrant experience or has it been somewhat different? (Schmidjell, 2020, Interview with B. Rothmüller).
Schmidjell sees herself as a women-specific, pro-migrant practitioner rather than a theoretical feminist. Within her work at the counseling center she is automatically confronted with the fact that personal life stories are linked to politics, discrimination, racism and social status. A strong political standpoint is necessarily fundamental in her work and always influences her, even if sometimes unconsciously: "We are political, only whether we are always aware of this is another question" (Schmidjell, 2020, Interview with B. Rothmüller).
In a utopia, Schmidjell imagines an "Intelligent Migrant Women's Counseling" approach that is sensitized to racism, cultural stereotypes, attributions based on nationalities, and to hidden racisms, such as arguments about unbridgeable differences of "cultures". Persons should not be regarded as cultural carriers but as individuals, and the focus should be on the resources that migrant women bring with them, not only on deficits. Counseling for migrant women and migration politics should be in balance with needs and resources in order to create a culture of discussion about migration that can address problems, while remaining reasonable and reflective. In the Women's Counseling Center, however, she experiences that such an ideal is still far from reality: Many of her clients are enormously affected by direct and everyday racism as well as by structural racism meted out by public institutions and authorities in their everyday lives.
After more than 20 years of working with Peregrina, Schmidjell can still look back on numerous positive and moving experiences as a psychologist, which show her again and again how valuable her work is: "That's also something great about my work, that happens as well, because I've been sitting here for so long... I see a life where I was part of and where I could do something to make it what it is now. It's not always a happy end, but sometimes, sometimes it is" (Schmidjell, 2020, Interview with B. Rothmüller)
In addition to her work in Migrant Women's Counseling, Sanda Schmidjell also works as a clinical psychologist and health psychologist in her own practice. Her special focus is on trauma and hypnosis therapy.
By Nina Franke & Barbara Rothmüller (2020)
To cite this article, see Credits
Selected Works
By and about Sanda Schmidjell
Schmidjell, S. (2020, February 4) Interviewed by B. Rothmüller [Video Recording].
Sanda Schmidjell
Birth:
1962
Training Location(s):
Mag., University of Zagreb (1987)
Primary Affiliation(s):
Peregrina - Center for Education, Counseling and Therapy of Immigrant Women
Career Focus:
Psychotherapy and Migration
Biography
Sanda Schmidjell is a clinical and health psychologist with a focus on migration and trauma. She is a long-standing employee of the Viennese migrant women's counseling center Peregrina.
Sanda Schmidjell was born on November 13, 1962 as Sanda Muminovic in Banjaluka, Bosnia. She studied psychology in Zagreb and graduated in 1987. After that she began training in transactional analysis and worked as a young psychologist in a hospital in Banjaluka. She remembered the organizational structure there as being strongly hierarchical and masculine – she didn't really feel taken seriously as a psychologist there. Today, Schmidjell, who has been working in a women's team for over 20 years, she can no longer imagine working like that (Schmidjell, 2020, Interview with B. Rothmüller).
Schmidjell came to Austria in 1997. One and a half years later, in 1999, she became a psychological counselor at Peregrina. This position was created through an aid project initiated by the counseling center to provide psychological support to women who had fled to Austria during the Bosnian war of 1992-1995. Due to the need that became apparent, the project became an integral part of the counseling center and Schmidjell also continued her work at Peregrina.
Starting with a basic knowledge of German and little work experience in Austria, Schmidjell acquired an enormous amount of knowledge over the years. She learned through self-study, practical work, and also from the clients themselves, for whom she feels both empathy and admiration. And Peregrina also continued to develop: today the counseling center with its multi-professional and multilingual women's team of social workers, lawyers, German teachers, and psychologists is an important contact point for migrant women in Vienna. It is not always easy: Peregrina women have to be persistent in their dealings with politicians and authorities in order to guarantee the existence of the counseling center, especially financially. Sanda Schmidjell does not regret these efforts, however, as she explains with a laugh: "I’ve been working at Peregrina since I came to Vienna and I think it is a good thing" (Schmidjell, 2020, Interview with B. Rothmüller).
In her therapeutic approach, a client- and contract-oriented work style is important to her, in which the client is seen as an equal partner. Due to the frequent multiple burdens on migrant women (e.g. residence, work, partnership, children) it is important for Schmidjell to focus therapeutic work concretely on the women's life reality, since "psychologizing" or working on the meta-level is sometimes not very helpful in these situations. An important keyword to characterize Schmidjell's work is reflection. When dealing with clients it is essential to consider individual socialisation and experience in order to meet the client's needs. This is a claim of Peregrina: The counselor should adapt to the needs of the client and not vice versa. Schmidjell is also influenced by her own experience of migration: "It is also important to know and to reflect that I am a migrant but that my experiences may be different from those of my clients. . . This is also a constant reflection: How have I been socialized, how has this client been socialized, is my experience considered a universal migrant experience or has it been somewhat different? (Schmidjell, 2020, Interview with B. Rothmüller).
Schmidjell sees herself as a women-specific, pro-migrant practitioner rather than a theoretical feminist. Within her work at the counseling center she is automatically confronted with the fact that personal life stories are linked to politics, discrimination, racism and social status. A strong political standpoint is necessarily fundamental in her work and always influences her, even if sometimes unconsciously: "We are political, only whether we are always aware of this is another question" (Schmidjell, 2020, Interview with B. Rothmüller).
In a utopia, Schmidjell imagines an "Intelligent Migrant Women's Counseling" approach that is sensitized to racism, cultural stereotypes, attributions based on nationalities, and to hidden racisms, such as arguments about unbridgeable differences of "cultures". Persons should not be regarded as cultural carriers but as individuals, and the focus should be on the resources that migrant women bring with them, not only on deficits. Counseling for migrant women and migration politics should be in balance with needs and resources in order to create a culture of discussion about migration that can address problems, while remaining reasonable and reflective. In the Women's Counseling Center, however, she experiences that such an ideal is still far from reality: Many of her clients are enormously affected by direct and everyday racism as well as by structural racism meted out by public institutions and authorities in their everyday lives.
After more than 20 years of working with Peregrina, Schmidjell can still look back on numerous positive and moving experiences as a psychologist, which show her again and again how valuable her work is: "That's also something great about my work, that happens as well, because I've been sitting here for so long... I see a life where I was part of and where I could do something to make it what it is now. It's not always a happy end, but sometimes, sometimes it is" (Schmidjell, 2020, Interview with B. Rothmüller)
In addition to her work in Migrant Women's Counseling, Sanda Schmidjell also works as a clinical psychologist and health psychologist in her own practice. Her special focus is on trauma and hypnosis therapy.
By Nina Franke & Barbara Rothmüller (2020)
To cite this article, see Credits
Selected Works
By and about Sanda Schmidjell
Schmidjell, S. (2020, February 4) Interviewed by B. Rothmüller [Video Recording].