When I was writing my dissertation in the late seventies, I joined a congressionally mandated team that had undertaken an epidemiological study of Vietnam veterans. I was particularly interested in what had caused the psychological breakdown of so many veterans on their return home, and I wanted to understand this Post Vietnam Syndrome, as we then called it.

My findings were so unexpected that they led to a career of treating survivors of catastrophes, and to writing and teaching about the psychodynamic causes and consequences of adult onset trauma, a topic that had been largely ignored by psychoanalysis for much of its history.

I am also particularly interested in working with people who are facing cross cultural dilemmas and questions of so called ‘assimilation.’ Whether they have come to America by choice or whether the decision was made out of necessity, immigrants find that these issues play a crucial role in their lives and in the lives of their children.