Faculty
Dream Explorer, USM Grad Membership Program
Johanna Jenkins has served on the faculty of the University of Santa Monica since the inception of the Counseling Psychology Program in 1992. As a member of the founding faculty for that unique program, Johanna participated in the design and co-facilitation of Counseling Children and Adolescents and Human Sexuality in the Therapeutic Context. She also served for 10 years as the Program Director. She was responsible for the original design, ongoing evolution, and co-facilitation of the Supervised Practicum, the third and completion year of the Counseling Psychology Program, until June 2009 when the Program was retired. She continued in her roles in USM’s Core Programs.
In 2009, USM awarded Johanna the John-Roger Award for Teaching Excellence in recognition of her many years of dedicated, loving service and her extraordinary contributions to the University. In 2007–2008, Johanna joined the faculty of the Consciousness, Health, and Healing Program. She then continued in this capacity as well as serving in several faculty roles in USM’s Second Year. Her participation, but not her loving for USM, completed when USM’s programs went online in 2020. She rejoins now with joy.
Johanna’s current USM offering, a workshop named The Dream Explorer, has evolved over the last thirty years from her USM Second Year project, in which she designed a workshop to support people in understanding their dreams, and delivered it to a small number of fellow students.
Licensed in the state of California as a Clinical Social Worker, Johanna has been in private practice since 1984, working with adults, children, families, and couples. Within the framework of Spiritual Psychology, her specialties include intimacy with Self, the mother/infant relationship, opening the creative channel, and dream work.
Johanna holds a Master’s Degree in Social Work from the University of Washington and completed a three-year training in Child Therapy with the Seattle Psychoanalytic Institute. She is a Clinical Member of the California Society for Clinical Social Work and an Associate Member of the California Association of Marriage and Family Therapists.
Johanna’s grown daughter, Emily Jenkins, has published a number of books for children and teens and is raising her own two daughters in New York City. Johanna herself writes poetry, and conducts a private therapy practice in Santa Monica, California, which also includes coaching with the specific focus of guiding individuals in enhancing the spiritual dimension of their private and personal lives.
Join Johanna!
“The gentleness of your voice and the kindness of your eyes are indicators of the Loving and Light that radiate from your Being. Your warmth, humor and irrepressible cheerfulness are also a part of your special brand of loveliness. Your unflappable grace under pressure, your ability to say just the right thing at the right time, and your willingness to serve in any capacity that Spirit directs you are truly inspirational. You have a heart of gold. It is with great wisdom, care and steadfast devotion to USM that you have served as a steward of the Counseling Psychology Program for the past 17 years. We are profoundly grateful for your many years of service.”
“The word "spiritual" can carry a lot of different meanings to different people. So I think it's important not to get too hung up on that. What I found in my work with Johanna is that it's really about uncovering that which inside is truly causal to our perceptions and behaviors in life, and cultivating an awareness there that enables us to grow and evolve beyond them. Johanna is truly masterful in that process.
In our work I would express a new ideal for my life, or for my presence as a leader in business, that I wished to experience and Johanna would help me trace back inside myself to uncover whatever judgments or beliefs I was holding that may have been preventing me from getting there. She'd then be a powerful facilitator in helping me let them go and move into a new and transformed experience.
As a result of my work with Johanna, I've come in contact with powerful personal insights that have changed, in hugely positive ways, how I am coming forward in both my personal and professional lives. And the loving and joy I experience in each of them.”
