Jan Haaken is professor emeritus of psychology at Portland State University, a clinical psychologist and documentary filmmaker.

From refugee camps, war zones, abortion clinics and pipeline protests to drag bars, dairy farms and hip-hop clubs, her films focus on contested social spaces and sites of repressed collective memory. Her recent films include Our Bodies Our Doctors, the 2-part Necessity Series, Atomic Bamboozle: The False Promise of a Nuclear Renaissance, and in 2025 – The Palestine Exception and the sequel to that film, Sumud: A Doctor’s Report on Genocide and Survival in Gaza.

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Sumud (Arabic: صمود) meaning steadfastness or steadfast perseverance. The film follows Dr. Travis Meleen, an American anesthesiologist volunteering at Nasser Hospital in Gaza as he works with Palestinian surgical teams that continue training at Nasser Hospital even as the medical center is under siege. The film includes commentary from Omar El Akkad, an Egyptian-Canadian journalist and writer reporting on the genocide. He is the author of One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This.

The Palestine Exception explores the largest anti-war movement since the 1970s as students, faculty, and staff demand divestment from companies doing business with Israel. The documentary features diverse academics confronting the historical censorship of criticisms of Israel and Zionism.

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Atomic Bamboozle

Atomic Bamboozle is documentary that follows anti-nuclear activists, tribal leaders, scientists and attorneys as they draw lessons from the decades-long campaign to shut down the Trojan Nuclear Power plant in Oregon and extend those lessons into a new struggle to stop small modular reactors (SMRs) from being built in the Pacific Northwest.

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Mind Zone: Therapists Behind The Front Lines

Mind Zone follows therapists with the 113th Army Combat Stress Control detachment as they carry out two conflicting missions: protecting soldiers from battle fatigue and keeping these same soldiers in the fight. With psychiatric casualties mounting, the United States Army ups the deployment of mental health detachments to war zones—an undertaking on a scale previously unimaginable.

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Necessity

This two-part film series unfolds around activists and their use of the necessity defense in jury trials in different regions of the US after being charged with trespassing. Legal strategies in the climate movement take center stage as Indigenous leaders and Native and non-Native activists respond to the growing climate emergency.

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Our Bodies Our Doctors

Our Bodies Our Doctors tells the story of a rebellion in the field of medicine as a cohort of physicians faces abortion stigma within their own profession and confronts religious control over health care decisions. Their fight takes them into a larger struggle over the heart and soul of American medicine.

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Educational Licensing

1st Edition

Psychiatry, Politics and PTSD

Breaking Down

Integrating critical and feminist psychology, psychiatry, and psychoanalysis, this text offers a distinct perspective of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) as a clinical and social phenomenon. It will be useful for scholars and practitioners in psychiatry, psychology, psychoanalysis, public health policy as well as, sociology, social work, gender studies, and the law.

“Haaken is both a psychoanalyst and a documentary filmmaker, and, in both roles, her penchant for storytelling is key.”

Wendy Winograd, Ph.D.
Licensed Clinical Social Worker and Nationally Certified Psychoanalyst

“Jan Haaken is one of feminist critical psychology’s most powerful voices. Here again, as in all her books and films, we discover that Haaken, a consummate story-teller, is also a consummate listener.”

Lynne Layton, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Psychology Dept. of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School

“This is a remarkable book by a remarkable author: psychoanalytic therapist, professor, scholar, and documentary filmmaker embedded in a Combat Stress Control unit in Afghanistan.”

Fred Alford, Ph.D.
Professor Emeritus, University of Maryland, College Park

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