MY BACKGROUND
I became a Psychotherapist as a natural progression of my interests as a Sociologist. At Mount Sinai School of Medicine I taught interns about the doctor-patient relationship. This was one of my most rewarding responsibilities, since it was about training doctors to communicate with their patients as human beings, not as diagnostic categories. When I got my Ph.D., I began my teaching career at Adelphi University where I specialized in teaching courses in the Sociology of Mental Illness and the Sociology of Death Grief and Bereavement.
Many of my students were in the nursing program and I began to realize I felt most rewarded when I believed my teaching would impact people’s lives. I loved watching my students make the connection between what we talked about in class and their own feelings about death and loss. Especially for the nursing students, who dealt with death so frequently, the course seemed to help them face their own fears and help their patients as well.
I realized that while I liked being a sociologist, what I liked best was teaching and the experience of making a difference in people’s lives. That is when I decided to change fields and study to become a Psychotherapist. It was one of the best decisions I ever made. Now, I have the best of both worlds. I am teaching candidates at the Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Study Center to become therapists and I am helping patients in my private practice to develop the lives they desire.