Academic Activities

Teaching and Supervision

 I have had an academic appointment at the University of Toronto since 2001.  I currently teach in the Psychiatry Residency Program in the Faculty of Medicine and I train and supervise psychiatry residents in psychodynamic psychotherapy at the University Health Network. I am also on Faculty and a Supervising Analyst at the Toronto Institute for Contemporary Psychoanalysis, where I teach in the 4-year post-graduate psychoanalytic training program and I am on the Faculty and a Clinical Supervisor at the Institute for the Advancement of Self Psychology where I teach in the 2-year post-graduate psychotherapy training program.

I also provide supervision in psychodynamic psychotherapy and psychoanalysis to registered psychologists, psychiatrists, and psychotherapists at all levels of experience, from novice to expert, in my private practice.  My own approach to supervision emphasizes fostering a willingness to see all symptoms and behaviour as meaningfully rooted in actual lived experience, no matter what the symptom, behaviour or diagnosis might be.  I want my students to develop a finely tuned ability to really listen to their patients, to see the threads of subjective and historical truth in whatever the patient communicates in his or her speech, perceptions or behaviours, no matter how “strange” or “dysfunctional.”  I also want to foster an appreciation for the inherently intersubjective nature of the psychotherapeutic process, to be able to reflect upon both the patient’s and the therapist’s internal process as each impacts the other, and to build confidence in the therapist’s ability to both deeply understand their patients and to be helpful to their patient’s growth and change.   Supervision for me is an inherently intersubjective process of mutual observation, reflection and construction of understanding, learning how to use psychoanalytic theory to enrich, but not lead, our therapeutic formulations and engagements, and about finding one’s own authentic self in the developmental process of becoming a psychotherapist.

Research and Scholarly Writing:

I have a held major research grants and I have published in top academic journals and lectured extensively throughout Canada, the United States and Europe.  Much of my research has focused on better understanding the processes and outcome of psychological therapies and in better understanding the role of psychological processes in adaptation to medical illness.  Our lab at the CAMH/University of Toronto produced some of the seminal papers on mindfulness and has influenced research into mindfulness-based treatments worldwide even earning us an audience with the Dali Lama.  A link to some of my papers can be found through Researchgate.net.