4th and final talk of the 2025-2026 Conference Series by Robin Chalfin, LICSW

Chalfin centers queer and feminist theory as essential to an existential-phenomenological exploration of the paradox of powerlessness and powerfulness.Considering non-dual spiritual traditions, deconstructive and critical theory, psychoanalytic relational frameworks, and the existential relational tradition cultivated at NECET, she highlights how marginal voices – often erased or minimized in dominant narratives – offer vital perspectives on vulnerability, responsibility, and being-with.Embracing multiplicity, friction and dislocation, not as deficits but as generative conditions for relational and pollical aliveness, Chalfin reframes home and belonging as dynamic, contested, and transformative. Tracing a journey from formative origins to dwelling in the margins, the presentation invites reflection on how difference (differance), power, and presence create openings for clinical practice and community-making that inhabit, rather than resolve, paradox.