The American Psychoanalytic Association Fellowship Program is designed to offer additional knowledge of psychoanalysis to outstanding early-career mental health professionals and academics, the future leaders and educators in their fields. The 17 individuals who are selected as fellows each year have their expenses paid to attend the national meetings of the American Psychoanalytic Association during the fellowship year and to participate in other educational activities. The biographies below introduce this year's excellent group of fellows. We enthusiastically welcome them to APsaA.
Chris Brubaker, M.D., Ph.D., is a first-year child psychiatry fellow at Oregon Health & Science University. He was a general psychiatry resident at the University of Washington. He received a Ph.D. in neuroscience and M.D. from the University of Cincinnati and a B.A. from the College of Wooster, Ohio. He has been enrolled in the child psychotherapy program at the Seattle Psychoanalytic Society and Institute. His interests include psychodynamic research and teaching, self psychology, and neuropsychoanalysis. He enjoys living in the Pacific Northwest and gets outside as much as he can.
David Buxton, M.D., is a second-year child and adolescent psychiatry fellow at MGH/McLean Hospitals in Boston. As an undergraduate, he attended Emory University and majored in religion with a focus on Tibetan Buddhism. He went to medical school at Virginia Commonwealth University and completed adult psychiatry training at Brown University. He is part of the MGH pediatric palliative care team and will begin Harvard's Palliative Care/Hospice Fellowship in July 2014. Buxton's research utilizes attachment theory in an effort to understand family dynamics and resiliency in the palliative care population.
Anna Lopatin Dickerman, M.D., was born and raised in New York City. She received her B.A. from Harvard College in 2005, having majored in history of art and architecture, and graduating magna cum laude with highest honors. Dickerman received her M.D. from New York University School of Medicine in 2009, where she was elected to the A.O.A. Honors Medical Society. Dickerman completed her general adult psychiatry residency training at the Payne Whitney Clinic of New York-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center this past June. She is also a recent graduate of the Psychoanalytic Fellowship from Columbia University Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research. Dickerman has published in the American Journal of Psychiatry and has been contributing author for several books from American Psychiatric Publishing. Next year, Dickerman will be a fellow in psychosomatic medicine (consultationliaison psychiatry) at New York-Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia University Medical Center.
Aaron R. Estrada, Ph.D., M.S., M.A., is an assistant professor in the Department of Psychology and Child Development at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo. He received his B.A. in psychology and sociology from the University of California Santa Cruz, an M.S. in clinical psychology from San Francisco State University, and M.A. and Ph.D. from the Department of Counseling, Clinical, & School Psychology at the University of California Santa Barbara. His interest in multiculturalism, underserved populations and the role of psychological service provision and assessment cuts across his research, teaching, and clinical aspirations. His dissertation focused on the inter- and intra-personal influence of cultural and ethnic identity factors and their impact on cognitive testing performance. Current research is aimed at exploring the achievement gap, attrition, and retention of Hispanic and Latino college students.
Yael Holoshitz, M.D., is a chief resident in psychiatry at Columbia University/New York State Psychiatric Institute. After attending college at the University of Michigan, she moved to New York City and earned her medical degree from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. There, Holoshitz was active in initiatives on writing and humanities in medicine, and served as editor of the school's literary arts journal for two years. During this time, she became interested in trauma and resilience, and while in medical school, was involved in a longitudinal study assessing risk for PTSD in combat soldiers. Her current interests include areas of psychiatry that interface with broader delivery of medical care, such as consultation-liaison and emergency psychiatry. She is also interested in how outcomes are understood and defined in psychodynamic psychotherapy.
Marcus “Bo” Houston, M.D., M.P.H., is a fourth-year psychiatry resident at Emory University where he also received his medical and public health degrees. He is chief resident of Emory's Outpatient Psychotherapy and Psychopharmacology Training Program. Prior to medical school, he earned a B.A. from Davidson College in anthropology with a focus on comparative religion and culture. His formative encounter with Buddhist practice while studying abroad primed his current interest in the possibilities inherent in viewing psychoanalysis as an ongoing “practice.” Along these lines, he is especially interested in understanding the analytic process as it extends outside of the analytic hour both during psychoanalysis and after termination. He also hopes to find ways to integrate psychoanalytic concepts into his residency training and across clinical divides.
Nina Katzander, Ph.D., M.S., is a staff psychologist at Columbia University Medical Center's Student Health Services. Her B.A. was awarded summa cum laude, in English, sociology, and Honors Program from Hunter College. She received her doctorate in clinical psychology from Adelphi University's Derner Institute of Advanced Psychological Studies. Her internship and first postdoctoral fellowship was at Rutgers University's counseling center and subsequently she completed a two-year postdoctoral fellowship at the William Alanson White Institute. She earned an M.S. from Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism and is former managing editor of Studies in Gender and Sexuality. A recent presentation at an international psychoanalytic conference focused on psychoanalytic “frame” issues unique to the digital age.
Sohye Kim, Ph.D., is a postdoctoral fellow at the Department of Pediatrics and Menninger Department of Psychiatry at Baylor College of Medicine, where she conducts functional neuroimaging research on the relations between maternal attachment and child socioemotional development. She is also engaged in parttime clinical work through the adolescent unit at the Menninger Clinic. She received her B.A. summa cum laude in psychology from Yonsei University, Korea, and her Ph.D. in clinical psychology from the Rosemead School of Psychology, La Mirada, California, before completing her clinical psychology internship at the Menninger Clinic. Her interests lie in neurobiology of attachment, intergenerational transmission of maternal attachment and trauma, and treatment of severe personality disorders. Her work seeks to elucidate the neurocognitive and neurobiological mechanisms through which enduring character structures are built in early childhood, and grapples with the reconstruction of such structures as they occur in therapy to effectuate lasting changes.
Martina Kolb, Ph.D., received her doctorate in comparative literature from Yale and is assistant professor of German at Penn State. Her research interests are poetics, psychoanalysis and the inter-arts with a focus on German, Italian, and American literature and culture. Her book Nietzsche, Freud, Benn, and the Azure Spell of Liguria is a geopoetic study of three modernists whose encounters with the Mediterranean region led to an innovative fusion of word and world. Continuing her interest in the psychophysical elements of artistic expression, she is currently at work on her second monograph, entitled In the Gesture of Laoco$oUn: The Interpretation of Screams in the Inter-Arts. She has also published on Dante, Goethe, Benn, Pound, Brecht, Weigel, and Johnson, and has translated interviews with Holocaust survivors for the International Slave and Forced Laborers Interrogation Project. She has been the recipient of a number of awards, most recently by the American Friends of Marbach and the Miller Foundation (Exile Studies Centre) at the University of London.
Raynia L. McGee, M.D., M.S., is a fourth-year psychiatry resident in the Department of Neuropsychiatry and Behavioral Science at Palmetto Health/University of South Carolina School of Medicine. She received her B.S. degree in biology from Spelman College, her M.S. degree in environmental science from the University of Texas at San Antonio, and her M.D. degree from Meharry Medical College. Her academic interests in residency include post-traumatic stress disorder among the veteran population and the effect the disorder has on family dynamics. In addition, her interests include cultural competence among mental health providers, and the dynamics of religion in mental health treatment. She was awarded the Lebert H. Harris Psychoanalytic Award by the Department of Neuropsychiatry for her interest in psychodynamic/psychoanalytic therapy.
Masha Mimran, Ph.D., is a lecturer in the French Department at Barnard College. Her major field of study is 19th- and 20th-century French prose and poetry, the history of medicine, medical philosophy, and psychoanalysis. Her graduate training at Princeton University was in French and comparative literature. Her dissertation, “The Poetics of Pathology: Hysteria from Neurology to Psychology,” investigates the discursive exchanges between fictional, visual, and medical representations of hysteria from the 1850s to the 1930s. She argues that
there was a cross-pollination between the novel and medical discourses, as well as between the mental sciences and visual media that had a decisive impact on the way hysteria was diagnosed and treated, leading to the birth of psychoanalysis. She examines how fictional depictions of hysteria in the novel and art at once reflected and inspired the diagnostic breakthrough that focused on the psychological roots of the illness rather than the neurological assessment of its physical cause. She is working on turning her dissertation into a book and also working on two articles, “Scalpels, Pens, and the Diagnosis of the Heroines of Hysteria: Charcot, Richet, and Flaubert's Madame Bovary” for Literature and Art Studies and “From Ateliers to Laboratoires: Medical and Imaginary Destinations of Hysteria” for Literature and Medicine.
Simha Ravven, M.D., completed her adult psychiatry residency at Cambridge Health Alliance/Harvard Medical School. She is currently a Forensic Psychiatry Fellow at the Division of Law and Psychiatry at Yale School of Medicine. Ravven received her B.A. in studio art and Near Eastern studies from Hamilton College and M.D. from the University of Iowa Carver College of Medicine where she received a Doris Duke Clinical Research Fellowship to study cancer screening and treatment among people with mental illness. Her research has also focused on depression and cardiovascular surgery.
Timothy R. Rice, M.D., is a first-year child and adolescent psychiatry fellow at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York. He received his B.S. in biology from Yale University where his thesis addressed developmental models of absence epilepsy. He received his M.D. from Columbia University's College of Physicians and Surgeons and completed his adult psychiatry training at Mount Sinai. In 2010 he joined the research division of the New York Psychoanalytic Society and Institute under Leon Hoffman and Wilma Bucci, where he has focused on process research and the childhood assessment of defense mechanisms. He is currently creating, with Hoffman, a defense-focused psychotherapy manual for children with externalizing behaviors and affect regulation deficiencies.
Dana Satir, Ph.D., works as a therapist and supervisor at Eating Recovery Center's adult inpatient/residential program in Denver. She also has an adjunct appointment at the University of Denver, where she supervises doctoral students. Satir holds an A.B. in psychology and Spanish literature from Princeton University, and completed Boston University's (BU) clinical psychology program. At BU she became interested in countertransference, as well as ways to integrate psychodynamic theory with behavioral approaches to treat individuals with personality and eating disorders. She completed her clinical internship at the Cambridge Health Alliance/Harvard Medical School and her postdoctoral fellowship at Children's Hospital Colorado. Satir won a grant through the Fund for Psychoanalytic Research to evaluate a relational/alliance focused treatment for women with anorexia nervosa. Satir has published several papers on personality, eating disorders, and clinician countertransference, and is currently working on a chapter as part of a psychodynamic casebook to be published by Guilford. She is also interested in developing a psychoanalytic film series for early career clinicians in the Denver area.
Brian J. Schulman, M.D., is a staff psychiatrist at the Massachusetts General Hospital Bipolar Clinic and an instructor at Harvard Medical School. He received undergraduate degrees in the biological basis of behavior and economics from the University of Pennsylvania and his M.D. from the University of California, San Francisco. He completed his residency training at the MGH/McLean program, where he served as MGH outpatient psychotherapy chief resident and was awarded the Ann Alonso Psychotherapy Award. In addition to his faculty positions, Schulman is currently pursuing advanced training in psychoanalytic psychotherapy from the Boston Psychoanalytic Society & Institute and maintains a small private practice in downtown Boston. At MGH, he moderates a regular case conference series entitled “Cross Talk” that examines challenging cases from the perspective of various psychiatric subdisciplines, in an effort to integrate neurobiological and psychological approaches. His academic interests include the psychodynamics of psychopharmacology and differentiating mood disorders from personality disorders.
Brian R. Smith, LCSW, M.S.W., is the Intensive Clinical Outreach Team program director at Aurora Mental Health Center in Aurora, Colorado, and he is also an affiliate faculty member in the Social Work Department at Metro State University of Denver, where he teaches Generalist Practice I and II. Smith received his B.A. in religion and philosophy with a minor in gender studies in 2005 from Augustana College in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, focusing on hermeneutics and queering the Imago Dei. He then earned his M.S.W. from the University of Iowa in 2008; his thesis studied therapy for therapists and ethical obligations to self. Smith's current interests include the attachment dynamics of treating homeless adults, such as the hateful countertransference reactions that communities often experience toward their most vulnerable populations.
Brian Smothers, Psy.D., M.A., is an assistant professor of clinical psychology and a member of the core faculty at the Wisconsin School of Professional Psychology (WSPP). He received his B.A. from Samford University, Birmingham, Alabama, an M.A. from Boston College, and a Psy.D. from WSPP. He completed his predoctoral internship at the Danielsen Institute at Boston University, a postdoctoral fellowship at Tufts University Counseling and Mental Health Services, and a postgraduate fellowship at the Massachusetts Institute for Psychoanalysis. His interests include training students in psychodynamic psychotherapy, as well as developing core interpersonal competencies and models of evaluation for clinical psychology students. His work integrates contemporary psychoanalytic thinking with applied hermeneutics. In addition to his teaching and supervising, he is also in private practice where he sees patients in psychodynamic psychotherapy. His clinical interests include working with trauma and personality disorders.