Academy leadership
Tina Adkins, Ph.D.
Director
Dr. Tina Adkins is a Research Assistant Professor with the Texas Institute for Child & Family Wellbeing, the Director of the Sue Fairbanks Psychoanalytic Academy, a Research Fellow with the International Psychoanalytic Association, and a practicing psychotherapist. She has an MA in Counseling from Texas State University, an MS in Developmental Psychoanalytic Psychology and a Ph.D. in Psychoanalytic Studies from University College London (UCL). Dr. Adkins has worked her entire career in the field of child welfare. She began as a Child Protective Services worker and went on to become a psychotherapist and then specialize in attachment and child development.
After graduating from UCL, Tina combined her previous experience working in the child welfare field with her understanding of psychoanalysis and applied it to the creation of an intervention called Family Minds. Family Minds is an evidenced-based short psychoeducational program for foster and adoptive parents that is based on attachment theory, neuroscience and psychoanalytic theory.
Tina travels extensively, collaborating with international researchers and clinicians in countries such as the UK, France, Italy, Canada, Australia and Chile. She also is a sought-after public speaker and regularly delivers trainings both internationally and nationally. She lives in Austin with her furry menagerie that includes two dogs and a cat, and enjoys outdoor adventures such as kayaking, hiking and cycling.
tina.adkins@austin.utexas.edu
Sue Fairbanks, MSSW
Sponsor
Sue Fairbanks is a 1981 graduate of the MSSW program at The University of Texas at Austin School of Social Work. Since 1986, she has maintained a full-time private practice in Austin with adults in individual and couples therapy and provided clinical consultation and supervision. She is a fellow at the Center for Psychoanalytic Studies and a board member of the Austin Society for Psychoanalytic Psychology.
Fairbanks began her professional career as an airline stewardess in the 1960s. During those years, she explored much of the external world and had a lifelong passion, nourished by her years with the airlines, about discovering the deeper inner world of the human psyche.
After graduating from the MSSW program, Fairbanks completed training to become a Certified Bioenergetic Analyst. Over the years, she trained and developed expertise in post-traumatic stress disorder, sexual abuse, dissociative disorders, gerontology and adoption. The thread that brought Fairbank’s different trainings together, along with her concurrent inner search, came about when she entered her own analysis. Fairbanks had the time and space to deeply reflect on her life as she has lived it. The exploratory and reflective nature of psychoanalytic thought knit together her inner search and different trainings into a complex ever-expanding whole. Fairbanks wishes to introduce psychoanalytic knowledge, in its many faceted forms, to students and the helping community so they, too, can have access to the rich knowledge base out of which so many subsequent psychological therapies have been formulated.
Lauren Bledsoe, LMSW
Program Coordinator
Lauren came to the Sue Fairbanks Psychoanalytic Academy in 2022 with seventeen years of social work experience ranging from case management and crisis intervention to policy analysis, training, and program administration. In her role as a part-time program coordinator for SFPA, Lauren handles operations and supports the future growth of academy programs.