Bio
Born and raised in Denver, I journeyed from the Rocky Mountains to the New England coast. An anthropology major and champion pole vaulter at Harvard, I became fascinated by a class on psychoanalytic theories of two-person relationships. I took the bait and was hooked. I eventually became a psychologist and later a psychoanalyst.
After receiving my doctorate at the University of Denver, my path led to an internship at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, MD, followed by more than a decade of service as an officer in the Navy. Old passions are hard to let go of, as I continued pole vaulting into my 30’s and had to privilege of representing the Navy in national competitions. While practicing in the Navy, I spent 8 months as the staff psychologist aboard the USNS Comfort during Operation Desert Shield.
I heard the siren song from the storied Menninger Clinic in Topeka, KS, only this song gave new life to my personal and professional growth. After completing post graduate training in clinical psychology at Menninger, I eventually became Training Director of the Postdoctoral Fellowship Program and received my psychoanalytic training at the Topeka Institute for Psychoanalysis. The Menninger Clinic left Topeka and so did I, relocating once more to Bethesda, MD. Once settled in Maryland, I served as President for the Washington Baltimore Society for Psychoanalysis but have devoted my professional life to private practice. And here I’ve been since 2000, happily married, raising wonderful children and being charmed by beautiful grandchildren. Truly blessed and grateful.
Writing about people and their struggles has been an integral part of what I do. I have authored four professional books – Disordered Thinking and The Rorschach, 1999, followed by its cousins Assessing Psychosis, 2015 (coauthored with Ali Khadivi), Rorschach Assessment of Psychotic Phenomena, 2017, and Psychological Assessment of Disordered Thinking & Perception, In Press (coedited with Irving Weiner). Unable to resist the play of imagination, I completed my debut novel, The 11th Inkblot, published in 2020.
People and their stories amaze and inspire. As a practicing psychologist and psychoanalyst, my passion for listening to people tell their stories ripens with time. The process of discovery that emerges from listening to what people tell me and to what they cannot and then through writing clinical reports, professional texts, or fiction is moving and deeply satisfying.
