Spencer holds a Master of Social Work degree from the Silberman School of Social Work at Hunter College (CUNY) and comes to psychotherapeutic work after a decade teaching history at the City College of New York (CUNY) and the Harry Van Arsdale Jr. School of Labor Studies (SUNY Empire State College). Spencer’s work as a historian informs his psychodynamic approach, a practice that examines how socio-historical conditions and systemic forces configure psychological experience, engender conscious and unconscious thoughts and beliefs, and produce recursive behavioral and relational patterns. Integrating his focus on understanding how a client’s past informs their present with modalities and techniques that enable clients to address present challenges in more immediate, direct, and short-term manners, Spencer considers growth as proceeding from client-led processes of disalienation, self-empowerment, and emancipatory self-transformation. Experienced working in educational and social work contexts with adolescents and young adults and doing trauma-informed work with refugee and immigrant populations seeking asylum, Spencer grounds his psychotherapeutic practice in a commitment to social justice and a belief that, in Saidiya Hartman’s words, “care is the antidote to violence.” Recognizing care as essential for dismantling and replacing harmful social and psychological structures—be they destructive self-concepts, behaviors, and internalized narratives, or oppressive social systems, institutions, and discourses—Spencer views psychotherapy as hopeful,  collaborative care work that enables clients to create new possibilities for personal growth, loving and liberated relationships, and collective care in families and communities.