Biography
I became interested in becoming a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst when he encountered Freud’s work as a Comparative Literature major at UCLA. Up till that point, I was considering a career as a painter.
I studied medicine at UCSF, then did my psychiatric residency at UCSF Langley Porter. In my residency, I worked part-time as medical director of an adolescent day treatment program in the Mission District of SF. While in residency, I was also a MacArthur Research Fellow studying qualities of language in the therapeutic conversation. After residency, I began my training at San Francisco Psychoanalytic Institute. Along with my clinical private practice, I became the medical director of the adolescent in-patient and day treatment program at McAuley’s—St. Mary’s Hospital in San Francisco. I continued my interest in adolescents- at-risk by becoming the Medical Director of the adolescent program at Herrick Hospital in Berkeley. This intensive work with adolescents complemented my work with adolescents in my private practice—an interest that continues to the present time. Eventually, I moved into a full-time clinical practice, seeing adults and adolescents in analytically-oriented therapy and psychoanalysis.
Along with his commitment to clinical work, I pursued a passion for teaching. Over the last thirty years,I taught analytic candidates, psychotherapy training students, and a wide range of clinicians with various experience in consultation and study groups. The topics are wide-ranging, from major theorists like Freud, Klein, Bion, and Ferenczi, to various schools of analysis like French and Latin American. I also led numerous clinical case conferences. For over ten years I co-chairs of Dialogues in Contemporary Psychoanalysis, a program that offers the Bay Area clinical community a range of relevant clinical topics and controversies.
I presented my clinical ideas at SFCP Scientific Meetings and at the Dialogues in Contemporary Psychoanalysis Program. He also presented nationally at the American Psychoanalytic meetings, various analytic societies, and at the International Psychoanalytic Association meetings.
In addition to my focus on the clinical situation, I draw from my interest in music and the arts to deepen an understanding of therapeutic conversation. In the last three years, I have begun to paint again, as I did in my early years. This practice complements my analytic work, honing a sensibility of openness, spontaneity, and freedom.
The paintings in this website