I am a training and supervising psychoanalyst. For thirty five years, I have maintained a private practice for the treatment of adults, adolescents and children in Northern New Jersey. In addition, I am a short story writer, a parapsychologist, and a poet. My non-fiction book “The Paranormal Surrounds Us” explores psychic phenomena in a variety of settings including the psychoanalytic. My book of fiction and poetry “Curious Stories of Diverse Places” contains stories of various cultures. Both are published in 2019. I anticipate a third book “The Anatomy of a Psychotic Experience and Other Searches for Personality” to be published in 2020.
My varied career has contributed to my fiction and non-fiction writing. I was raised, when very young, in a small town in the high Adirondacks, where my grandmother was a dentist, my grandfather a doctor, and then subsequently my family moved to New York City. I am a graduate of Yale College , Yale Law School, the University of Northern Colorado (M.A., Psychology) and the City University of New York (Ph.D., Psychology).
I have had many adventures before finding my way to being a psychoanalyst. In 1964, I participated in the Free Speech Movement in Berkeley, California; in the summer of 1965, I worked as a civil rights worker for Martin Luther King’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) primarily in Atlanta and Peach County Georgia; during a subsequent summer I was Mayor John Lindsay’s liaison to Coney Island; and after law school, I was a legal services attorney for Dinebeiina Nahilna be Agaditahe (attorneys who work for the economic revitalization of the Navajo people) in Arizona and New Mexico. I also represented Native Americans from various tribes in a famous sit-in case at the Littleton office of the Bureau of Indian Affairs (they were all acquitted); and briefly I owned an art gallery in Denver, Colorado.
My primary interests are in psychoanalysis, parapsychology, and cultural theories of causality; and how our daily life can be understood through these lenses — experienced in ways of which we are not fully conscious. My first psychoanalyst was Jule Eisenbud, M.D.. He was a preeminent psychoanalyst, but he was also a parapsychologist, best known for his work with the psychic photographer Ted Serios and for the integration of psychoanalysis and parapsychology. From him, I learned about both disciplines.
In my psychoanalytic career, I am a Fellow of the Institute for Psychoanalytic Training and Research (IPTAR); a Fellow of the International Psychoanalytic Association; and a member of the American Psychoanalytic Association. I am a Past President of IPTAR. I also co-produced two videos that reflect my interest in cultural issues: “Psychoanalysis in El Barrio” and “Black Psychoanalysts Speak” (these are available at http://www.pep-web.org).