MA in Psychology and Counseling Program
Rooted in my own experience of the value of progressive education, I have a strong commitment to academic settings that emphasize each student’s unique needs and interests. Before receiving my doctorate in Clinical Psychology from the Derner Institute at Adelphi University, I earned my Masters Degree in Psychology and Counseling from Goddard College, and my undergraduate degree in Liberal Arts from Sarah Lawrence College. The autonomous and creative structure of Sarah Lawrence was my first introduction to the excitement that can be found in becoming actively involved in learning. The journey from Sarah Lawrence to Goddard, however, included a lengthy detour through the thorny underbrush of a career in the music industry, where I finally learned that loving music and loving the music business are not even remotely the same. Goddard, years later, helped revitalize my dormant and diffuse interest in Psychology through the creation of a personal relationship to the field.
I am currently a staff psychologist at the Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center in New York City. I also have a small private psychotherapy practice. My work at the hospital focuses on clients whose overall clinical picture includes some form of substance abuse. I approach this work from a variety of theoretical perspectives, including psychodynamic and cognitive-behavioral, and try to tailor my approach to the specific needs of each client. In addition, I have a strong interest in the treatment of psychological trauma, an interest that developed when I was a self-defense instructor. Many of the people who took these classes were motivated to do so because they were survivors of traumatic events. This gave me the opportunity to be a part of the process whereby students were able to create new relationships to past trauma. My belief is that one does not “recover” from a traumatic experience as much as “integrate” trauma into a continually evolving sense of self and the world. The areas of substance abuse and psychological trauma have also been the focus of my research efforts. I received an NIH grant from the National Institute on Drug Abuse for a recently completed study examining a potential pathway from childhood trauma to adolescent and adult substance abuse. I was also a member of the Trauma Studies Group at the New York State Psychiatric Institute.
My overall psychological perspective is strongly influenced by psychoanalytic theory. I value many of the contributions psychoanalysis made to the genesis of psychology as a field, as well as the efforts in recent years that have resulted in significant advancements in conceptions of gender, sexuality, unconscious processes, and the power dynamics of the therapeutic alliance. Regardless of the modality in which one is working, I believe that much can be learned from integrating an analytic understanding of the complexity and ambiguity that characterize internal human processes and our interactions with others.
Finally, my wife Rebecca, our two cats (Bug and Quinn), and I live too far from the beach in Montclair, New Jersey.
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