Hans Agrawal, M.D., a PGY 4 resident, is at Massachusetts General Hospital/McLean Hospital in Boston. His theoretical academic interests revolve around the psychodynamics of race and sexuality in colonial, post-colonial and multicultural societies. He drew inspiration from critical social theory and literary criticism including the work of Fanon, Bhabha and Butler. As a graduate student in social anthropology at Harvard, he began and now directs a large-scale longitudinal study of the incidence, nosology and subjective experience of mental illness in New Delhi, India. Agrawal has received awards for his teaching, which includes a seminar for Harvard College undergraduates entitled, “Economy and Society,” and a seminar on the theory and management of borderline personality disorder for junior psychiatry residents. He plans on psychoanalytic training.
Leslie Bell, M.S.W., M.A., is a clinical social worker and doctoral candidate in the Department of Sociology at the University of California at Berkeley. Frustrated with the limitations of mainstream sociological theory during graduate school, she took a course from Dr. Nancy Chodorow on psychoanalytic theory and its application to sociology. The course instilled such passion about psychoanalytic concepts that she shifted direction, deciding to train in clinical social work, only later returning to academia to apply psychoanalytic thinking to female experiences of sexuality. Her research addressing women's subjective experience of sexuality is rooted in psychoanalytic theory and based empirically on clinically informed, qualitative interviews. Bell intends to continue an academic and clinical career of teaching, research and practice. She is a fellow with the Sexuality Research Fellowship Program of the Social Science Research Council for the 2002–2003 academic year.
Gary Brendel, M.D., is a Research Fellow at Cornell University/New York Presbyterian Hospital investigating the relationship between the quality of borderline patients' object relations and affective dysregulation measured behaviorally and by functional MRI. As Chief Resident at Payne Whitney Clinic in 2001–2002 he developed a new cognitive neuroscience course for residents. Last year, he participated as a faculty member at a national conference for chief residents. As an English major at Amherst, Brendels interest in modern poetry's emphasis on subjective experience set the groundwork for his later interest in psychoanalysis. After reading Freud's work during medical school at Yale, and intrigued by the writings of Eric Kandel, Brendel began to gravitate towards the interface between neuroscience and psychoanalysis. He is planning to pursue psychoanalytic training and to continue his research.
Tiberiu Bodea Crisan, M.D., a PGY 4 resident at Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic in Pittsburgh, was trained as an internist in his native Romania. Romania changed dramatically during his medical internship. When Bodea Crisan was involved in a clinical research study on suggestibility before the fall of communism, the sponsoring agency was closed and its director arrested. After the political sea change, he was able to openly seek to improve the quality of life, especially in health care and academic pursuits. He helped create mental health services and developed expertise in developmental disabilities, which led to a focus on the rights of mentally ill patients. This in turn resulted in opportunities to work on developmental disabilities and to train clinically in psychiatry in the U.S. He enjoys writing poetry.
Michael Brodsky, M.D., is a PGY 4 resident at the UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute in Los Angeles. He studied developmental psychology and comparative religion prior to entering medical school. During college Brodsky recruited foster parents for the District of Columbia and immersed himself in the clinical and policy challenges of providing developmental guidance for children in the state's custody. He is interested in applying psychodynamic principles in non-traditional treatment settings, including the public sector. Brodsky currently coordinates the community psychiatry rotation for residents at UCLA and is staff psychiatrist at a psychodynamically-oriented community counseling center. He also sings in a choral group composed of psychoanalysts, psychiatrists and other health professionals.
Adam Conklin, Ph.D., is a Psychology Fellow at The Austen Riggs Center in Stockbridge, MA, and Clinical Instructor in Psychology at Harvard Medical School. Studying political science as an undergraduate at Boston University, he was introduced to psychoanalytic theory and its application to politics and society. After beginning a Ph.D. in political science, Conklin switched pathways to begin a masters degree in human development and psychology at Harvard. He received his Ph.D. in clinical psychology from University of Massachusetts, focusing his research on the impact of trauma on object relations and the intergenerational transmission of violence. Conklin furthered his expertise in trauma as a fellow in the Victims of Violence program in Cambridge. He has presented extensively on these topics and on assessing structural change and object representations using the Thematic Apperception Test, and has published with Dr. Drew Westen.
Leigh Duck, Ph.D., is Assistant Professor in the Department of English at the University of Memphis. She received her Ph.D. in English and American Languages and Literature from the University of Chicago. Inspired by a course on “Psychoanalysis and Literature”, her interest in psychoanalysis became a central focus in her doctoral dissertation on how the cultural paradigm of racial segregation affected the production and reception of Depression-era southern literature. This manuscript will soon be published as she begins work on a second book about how the work of writers was impacted by segregation. Duck's teaching is heavily influenced by psychoanalytic theory, both in her introductory course in literature and her advanced seminars. This year she teaches her own course on “Psychoanalysis and Literature.”
Harwant Gill, M.D., Ph.D., is a PGY 4 resident at St. Elizabeth's Hospital in Washington, D.C. Born and raised in Split, Croatia. Gill completed medical school in Zagreb. Gill's longstanding interest in psychiatry and neuroscience led
him to a doctorate in neuroscience and psychology from Iowa State University. There he investigated the mechanisms that generate images in the brain and the sensory experiences that precede the full conscious ability to report the content of a stimulus. Upon graduation, Gill was hired by the State of Iowa to develop a research basis for the distribution of substance abuse treatment for Iowa and became Chief Medical Officer the Iowa Division of Medical Services, managing the Medicaid/Managed Care Program. Thrilled to finally be exposed to psychoanalytic thinking, Gill has recently joined the Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Program of the Washington Psychoanalytic Society.
Joshua Guthman, M.A., is a Ph.D. candidate in history at the University of North Carolina. His research focuses on the culture and history of “ordinary” Southerners. He first became interested in psychoanalysis while searching for more satisfying ways to explain the relationship between individuals' personal motivations and the larger cultural ideas that surrounded them. Psychoanalysis offered Guthman a “close-up” picture of how individuals act within, and even against, culture, and thereby allowed him to pose new questions about working-class southerners' changing relationship with their folk culture during the Souths early-twentieth century industrialization. He is currently at work on a dissertation about religious psychology in the Old South, “What I am ‘Tis Hard to Know: Primitive Baptists’ Struggle for Self and Society, 1800–1850.”
Tammy Kaminer, Ph.D., is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Derner Institute at Adelphi University in New York. She received her Ph.D. in clinical psychology, child track from St. John's University. Her interest in maternal functioning on the mother-child relationship and child development has led to dissertation research with Beatrice Beebe, Ph.D. examining the relationship between mothers' depression and the way they talk to their infants. Her postdoctoral research includes development of a scale for measuring mother-preschooler partnership during pretend play. She also collaborates with Daniel Schechter, M.D., [ApsaA Fellow, 1995–1996] on the adaptation of an instrument measuring maternal affective communication to a wider age range. She has presented her work on child-mother play and attachment to lay and professional audiences, and taught introductory psychology.
Amir Levine, M.D., is a resident in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at Columbia University/New York State Psychiatric Institute. A native Israeli, he completed military service in Israel and finished medical school at Hebrew University before moving to New York for adult psychiatry residency at Columbia. His childhood fascination with biology and history found expression in reading about ancient culture and visiting archeological excavations. In high school he conducted a research project on Biblical references to birds of prey and concluded that the Mesopotamian “nshr” was erroneously translated into the Hebrew “eagle”, instead of “vulture”. The two hundred page manuscript was published by the Jewish National and University Library. These historical and biological interests evolved into a college thesis on childhood gender nonconformity, participation in genetics research and translation of the Diagnostic Interview for Genetic Studies in psychiatry (DIGS) into Hebrew. During medical school, Levine arranged meetings with fellow medical students and a psychoanalyst to discuss hospital experiences.
Julie Peters, M.D., is a Child and Adolescent resident at Yale University. As one example of her many leadership activities, the winter clothing drive she initiated during high school still continues as an annual event. Bent on an environment career, Peters found, after college, that the satisfaction she felt listening and motivating others in her temporary work as a fitness instructor surpassed that from her earlier research work studying beaver life. This experience was the harbinger of her future career in psychiatry. During medical school at New York University, Peters led the Domestic Violence Intervention Program in which she organized seminars to teach medical students about domestic violence and how to interview suspected abuse victims. She plans a career treating children and adolescents and hopes to influence education and policy.
Shoshana Ringel, Ph.D., completed her doctorate in social work from Smith College and a doctoral fellowship at Tufts University Counseling Center before becoming an assistant professor at Western Michigan University for two years. She recently joined the faculty at the University of Maryland School of Social Work. Ringel was born and raised in Israel, moving to the U.S. during adolescence. Her personal experience dealing with adjustment to a new culture contributed to her later professional interests, which include cross-cultural aspects of the treatment relationship and boundaries. A prolific writer, she has published extensively on the inter-subjective experience of cultural difference and traumatic reenactment. Her research has centered on acculturation of Ethiopian Jewish adolescents in Israel and on cultural competency in rural Michigan. Ringel has already begun instilling her enthusiasm for psychodynamics in her students.
Sarah Schoen, Ph.D., completed her degree in clinical psychology and a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Michigan before recently returning to New York City. At Bellevue Hospital, she is working as a forensic psychologist and as a member of the clinical and supervisory staff in the Bellevue/NYU Program for Survivors of Torture. Schoen's career pathway began with the study of literature and writing. After a brief stint in editing after college, she decided to pursue psychology. Her doctoral thesis, a narrative analysis of patients' experiences of helpful psychoanalytic therapies, underscores the complex relationships between contemporary theory, patients' discourse on change, and the broader cultural and mental health contexts in which both are situated. This work also reflects her abiding interests in work with severely disturbed patients, and in integrated approaches including developmental and relational orientations.
Arthur Sullivan, M.D., is a PGY 4 resident at University of Washington. Throughout his exemplary career as a researcher, teacher and clinician hematologist at McGill University in Montreal, Sullivan found himself practicing psychiatry as his patients dealt with grief, body image and loss. Quality of object relations and defenses rather than physical recovery predicted the capacity to withstand bone marrow transplant. Ready for a change, seven years ago Sullivan exchanged his tenured position for the opportunity to direct an acute leukemia service in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. As the balance of his interest between the psychiatric and purely medical aspects of his work continued to shift, he returned to the U.S. to begin to train in psychiatry. Sullivan hopes to combine his interests in immunology, psychodynamics and psychiatry.
Raymond Troy, M.D., is a PGY 4 resident in the triple board pediatrics/psychiatry/child psychiatry program at the University of Cincinnati. His interest in medicine was kindled by the disclosure of AIDS by a former teacher and mentor in the small town in which Troy was raised, and the ensuing experience of helping to provide care and education in the community. During medical school at St. Louis University, Troy was introduced to object relations theory while working on a research project on caregiverchild relational disorders as predictors of psychopathology. This exposure stimulated further reading and interest in psychoanalytic concepts in infant and child development. Current research with Dr. Frank Putnam addresses physically and sexually abused children. Troy plans an academic career combining clinical practice, teaching and research on pediatric trauma and resiliency.
Carolyn Zittel, Ph.D. is a Psychology Fellow at Two Brattle Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts and continues her training at The Cambridge Hospital/Harvard Medical School. Her doctorate in clinical psychology from the University of Massachusetts was awarded for research on subtyping borderline personality disorder. Her research was conducted with Dr. Drew Weston, with whom she continues to collaborate. This work has generated publications and presentations, most recently an invited presentation at an NIMH meeting on borderline personality disorder, and has also received funding from APsaA. A recent invited presentation of her psychodynamically-informed research at a college reunion was a notable triumph, as the department chair who invited her had years ago not welcomed her remark lamenting Freud's absence from his curriculum.