ABOUT
I am a clinical psychologist, psychotherapist, lecturer, and institutional consultant, in private practice in Newton, Massachusetts. My clinical background is with adults, adolescents, and children, in private practice, clinics and hospital settings, often in leadership positions. I have taught in institutes, graduate schools, and conferences internationally. While much of my clinical training is conventional, I have a lifelong interest in the integration of mindfulness and meditation into psychotherapy. At age 19 I received jukai initiation in Zen, and have been practicing in the Zen and vipassana traditions for over five decades.
I received a Masters degree from the University of Chicago where I explored issues of integration of these disciplines. After working for a number of years in a children’s psychiatric hospital and more briefly, in an adult facility. I earned my doctoral degree at Harvard University’s Laboratory for Human Development, studying comparative (cross-cultural) developmental psychology. My doctoral thesis was on the nature of the self among American Buddhists. Clinical training continued at Cambridge Hospital/Harvard Medical School, where I remain a part time Lecturer in Psychology in the Department of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School, at Cambridge Hospital.
In my career I have served as Clinical Director of a 400 bed state hospital, director for all inpatient and intermediate services for dually-diagnosed individuals in a private psychiatric hospital, ran an outpatient clinic for deinstitutionalized patients, and became a forensic psychologist providing expert witness testimony and evaluations to the court system. For many years I directed the mental health program at Tufts Health Plan, a large managed care organization in Massachusetts.
Building on a study group that formed in the early 1980’s, I helped found and incorporate the group as the Institute for Meditation and Psychotherapy in 1996, a non-profit educational organization, and served as its president for 10 years. I am currently on the Board of Directors of IMP and the Barre Center for Buddhist Studies.
In addition to clinical practice, I have been teaching internationally to lay and professional audiences on the integration of mindfulness and psychotherapy. I established the Certificate Program for mental health professionals, with over 25 faculty, now online and in its thirteenth year. With colleagues, I co-edited and co-authored Mindfulness and Psychotherapy, 2nd Edition (Guilford), and have authored a number of book chapters in Buddhism and World Culture, Mindfulness and the Therapeutic Relationship, Wisdom and Compassion in Psychotherapy, Begegnung von westlicher Psychotherapie und buddhistischer Geistesschulung, and other volumes.