Bios for PRC Members
(Listed Chronologically)
Dr. Sherwood Waldron, Chair and President is a psychoanalyst, in practice in New York since 1966, teaching as well at Mt. Sinai and at the New York Psychoanalytic Institute, where he trained in adult and child psychoanalysis. Previously he studied psychology as an undergraduate at Harvard, then after his MD at Yale Medical School trained in psychiatry and child psychiatry at Albert Einstein College of Medicine.
He has had a major interest for decades in the evaluation of the efficacy of psychotherapy and psychoanalysis. An NIMH sponsored project on outcomes of childhood neuroses was followed by a thirty-year project to develop a collection of recorded psychoanalyses and psychotherapies. He founded the Psychoanalytic Research Consortium to study the relationships between what patient and therapist contribute and benefit. This effort has been supported by grants from the American Psychoanalytic Association and the International Psychoanalytic Association, among others, and has the largest database in the world of recorded psychoanalyses. Currently the group is looking to apply natural language processing and artificial intelligence to digest this large database, and look for reliable ways of identifying early in treatment whether and to what degree the patient is likely to benefit from this treatment.
Sherwood Waldron, MD
www.psychoanalyticresearch.org
Member, Fund for Psychoanalytic Research, American Psychoanalytic Association
98 Riverside Drive
New York, NY 10024
cell: 917-414-5012
Email: woodywald@earthlink.net
Dr. Karl Stukenberg, Vice President is a practicing psychoanalyst and board certified clinical psychologist in Cincinnati, OH. He is a faculty member at the Cincinnati Psychoanalytic Institute where he is the chair of the curriculum committee. He is an Associate Professor at Xavier University’s School of Psychology. His graduate training in clinical psychology was at the Ohio State University, followed by an internship at the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston and three years of postdoctoral training at the Menninger Clinic, which, at the time, was in Topeka Kansas. He has been a licensed clinician since 1991.
Dr. Stukenberg has studied psychopathology and character structure, including the relationship between stress and pathology as well as the measurement of personality and character structure using the MMPI, the Rorschach and other instruments. He has worked with the PRC for the past fifteen years to better understand the relationship between the process of what highly trained and skilled psychoanalysts actually do with their analysands in treatment and the well-being and analytic functioning of those individuals. The questions that he is currently addressing include how the alliance (the working relationship), the abilities of the patient, and the attitude of the analyst towards the patient are related to the patient’s functioning and well-being.
Karl W. Stukenberg, Ph.D., ABPP
School of Psychology Xavier University
3800 Victory Parkway, Cincinnati, OH 45207-6411
Tel: 513-745-1041
Email: stukenb@xavier.edu
Dr. Fonya Helm, Secretary is a clinical psychologist and a Board Certified psychoanalyst. She graduated from Harvard College in 1963 and received a PhD from George Washington University in 1975 with a dissertation on the cognitive effects of marijuana. She lived and practiced in the Washington area for many years, and was Chair of the Dynamics of Psychotherapy Training Program at the Washington School of Psychiatry from 1984-1994. In 2009, she moved to Virginia Beach, VA where she continues her private practice and sees patients in person, online and by phone. For more than 30 years, she has supervised clinicians and has treated individuals and couples in her private practice. She is licensed in six states: Colorado, District of Columbia, Florida, Maryland, Virginia and Washington.
She is a Supervising and Training Analyst at the Institute for Contemporary Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis and at the Contemporary Freudian Society. She also is an Affiliate Member of the Washington-Baltimore Center for Psychoanalysis, where she was a research candidate in the 1970’s. She has more than 15 publications in peer-reviewed journals or books on hope, femininity, therapeutic process, and the psychodynamic aspects of cognitive behavioral therapy. Her more than 30 presentations include the following subjects: altered states of awareness, attachment, creativity, dreaming, love, parallel process in supervision, psychotherapeutic process and trauma. She has taught in numerous training programs and currently is active in the China-American Psychoanalytic Alliance and is on the Board of Directors of the Psychoanalytic Research Consortium, the Washington Professionals for the Study of Psychoanalysis, and formerly on the Board of Section I, Division 39 of the American Psychological Association.
Fonya Lord Helm, PhD, ABPP
Clinical Psychologist and Psychoanalyst
504 Susan Constant Drive
Virginia Beach, VA 23451
757-282-3525
fonya.helm@cox.net
drfonyahelm.com
Patricia Morrill, Treasurer, received her MBA from Columbia Business School in 1972. Following a career in banking, she founded Morrill Associates, a search firm focused on recruiting investment bankers.
She has held leadership positions in a number of not-for-profit organizations as president, board member and/or treasurer and has worked with Dr. Waldron editing various papers for publication. She is currently Treasurer of the Mount Desert Festival of Chamber Music.
98 Riverside Drive,
NY, NY 10024-5323
Dr. Katie Aafjes-van Doorn is a Clinical Psychologist and psychotherapy researcher. Previously, she received a MSc in Clinical Psychology from the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, as well as a MSc in Psychological Research and a doctorate in Clinical Psychology from University of Oxford, UK. Over the years, she has worked clinically in different settings within the National Health Service, in the UK as well as at a psychoanalytic community clinic in San Francisco. She moved to New York in 2016 for a one-year postdoctoral research fellowship at the Derner Institute for Psychological Services, Adelphi University. She has co-authored an introductory book on clinical psychology, chapters on process-outcome research and research in clinical psychology and has written several peer reviewed empirical and review papers on the role of in-session affect experiencing and attunement in psychotherapy, psychodynamic and psychoanalytic treatments.
Katie is now an Assistant Professor at Ferkauf Graduate School of Psychology, Yeshiva University, New York, where she teaches courses on evidence-based psychodynamic psychotherapy, interpersonal psychodynamic psychotherapy and research design to the doctoral students in the clinical psychology program. Her research interest is in psychodynamic psychotherapy as well as its potential moderators and mediators of change. In order to operationalize the (non)verbal psychodynamic processes, students in her research lab learn about several observational coding systems of unconscious processes & therapist techniques. This facilitates data-collection for potential research projects and most importantly also aids clinical skills.
Dr. Katie Aafjes-van Doorn
Assistant Professor of Clinical Psychology
Ferkauf Graduate School of Psychology
Yeshiva University
Rousso Building, room 123
1165 Morris Park Avenue
Bronx, NY 10461
katie.aafjes@yu.edu
Luis H. Ripoll M.D.is a psychoanalyst educated at and affiliated with the New York Psychoanalytic Institute, who works in private practice in New York. He completed his medical training at the University of Florida, and psychiatry residency at Mount Sinai School of Medicine, where he served as chief resident. He completed a MIRECC Advanced Clinical Research Fellowship on the neurobiology of personality disorders at the James J. Peters VA Medical Center, and during his psychoanalytic education, he completed the New York Psychoanalytic Institute’s Silvan Clinical Research Fellowship. His interests include borderline and psychotic personality structure, the impact of trauma on personality development, disturbances in identity and sense of self, mentalization, the neurobiology of attachment, empathy, and interpersonal functioning, clinical aesthetics, psychoanalytic field theory, and the roles of creativity, curiosity, and play in the therapeutic process. He has published on related subjects in journals such as Neuropsychoanalysis, Dialogues in Clinical Neuroscience, and Current Psychiatry Reports, and he is a member of the New York Psychoanalytic Institute’s Scientific Program Committee. Luis also is the website editor.
Luis H. Ripoll M.D.
New York Psychoanalytic Institute
Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai Medical Center, Dept. of Psychiatry
Psychoanalytic Research Consortium
Psychoanalytic Research & Development Fund
240 Madison Ave.
Office 10A
New York, NY 10016
Tel: 917-267-0731
Dr. Steve Axelrod is a clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst, with practices in psychoanalysis, psychotherapy, and organizational consulting in New York City. Dr. Axelrod was trained at the NYU Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis where he is on the faculty as an Adjunct Assistant Clinical Professor. He is also a Principal of the Boswell Group, a network of psychodynamic management consultants.
In addition to a number of journal articles Dr. Axelrod is the author of the 1999 book Work and the Evolving Self, which broke new ground in educating clinicians about work and organizational issues in their practices. He is also the co-editor of the 2018 book Progress in Psychoanalysis: Envisioning the Future of the Profession. In the course of his career Dr. Axelrod has developed expertise in applying a systems psychodynamic approach across all the domains of his practice . He is currently interested in the intersection of psychoanalysis and executive advising and in applying a systems psychodynamic approach to problems of culture, leadership, and innovation in psychoanalysis.
Steven D. Axelrod, Ph.D.
Faculty, NYU Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy & Psychoanalysis
Co-Editor, Progress in Psychoanalysis(https://www.routledge.com/Progress-in-Psychoanalysis-Envisioning-the-future-of-the-profession/Axelrod-Naso-Rosenberg/p/book/9781138477872)
60 West 13th St, Suite LC
New York, NY 10011
Tel. 212-633-0077
Email: steveaxelrod5@gmail.com
Seymour Moscovitz, Ph.D. obtained his doctorate in clinical psychology from The City College of New York in 1978. He completed analytic training at the New York University Postdoctoral Program in 1985 and at IPTAR in 2004. Since 1979, he has occupied administrative, clinical, and supervisory roles in hospital and court settings and has been in private practice in Manhattan since 1987. Teaching interests include psychoanalytic theory, psychodiagnostics, and the contributions of Hans W. Loewald. His major research interest has been the process and outcome of psychoanalytic treatment, particularly the therapeutic alliance. He is a member of the Rapaport-Klein Study Group, a fellow of the International Psychoanalytic Association, and a board member of the Psychoanalytic Research Consortium.
Email: smoscov@aol.com
Lissa Weinstein, Ph.D. is a Professor in the Doctoral Program in Clinical Psychology at the City College of New York and the Graduate Center, a graduate and faculty member of the New York Psychoanalytic Institute, and a fiction writer. She is the head of Graduate Education in Psychology at APSA, and on the editorial boards of The Psychoanalytic Study of the child and Psychoanalytic Psychology. She currently teaches the courses on Unconscious Fantasy and Perversion to advanced candidates at the New York Psychoanalytic. Her interests include the interrelationship of neurobiology and psychoanalysis, the function of repetition, as well as film and literature studies. She won the Heinz Hartmann Jr. Award winner with Dr. Arnold Wilson for their papers on the work of Lev Vygotsky and psychoanalysis. Recent publications include The Neurobiology of Personality Disorders: Implications for Psychoanalysis and Personality disorders, attachment and psychodynamic psychotherapy, both with Larry Siever, M.D., Physiological and developmental contributions to the Feeling of Reality, and Towards a Clinical Integration of Theoretical Perspectives with Steven Ellman, Ph.D, and Why Bion? Why Now? Novel Forms and the Mystical Quest. Her film papers have appeared in Rivista di Psichoanalisi, Psychoanalytic Inquiry, Psychoanalytic Psychology, and the International Journal of Psychoanalysis.
Diana Diamond is Professor in the Doctoral Program in Clinical Psychology at the City University of New York (emerita), and Adjunct Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at the Weill Medical Center of Cornell University, where she is also a senior fellow in the Personality Disorders Institute (PDI). She is also on the faculty of New York University Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis, the New York Psychoanalytic Society and Institute (NYPSI), and the New School for Social Research.
At the PDI, she has investigating the impact of narcissistic pathology on the treatment process and outcome over the course of Transference Focused Psychotherapy (TFP). These, clinical and research investigations have led to her most recent book A Clinical Guide to Treating Narcissistic Disorders: A Transference Focused Psychotherapy (with Frank Yeomans, Barry Stern and Otto Kernberg, Guilford Press, in press). She has also recently published, Cinematic Reflections on the Legacy of the Holocaust: Psychoanalytic Perspective (Taylor and Francis, Routledge, 2018). She has written a number of articles in the areas of the theory, research and treatment of personality disorders, the relevance of attachment theory and research to psychoanalysis, mental representations and how they change over the course of dynamic therapy, and gender issues.
She is the recipient of several awards including the research award from the American Psychological Association (Division 39), and the inaugural International Society for Transference Focused Psychotherapy (ISTFP) Research Award. She is on the Editorial Boards of Psychoanalytic Psychology, Psychological Issues, the Journal of Couple and Family Psychoanalysis, and Psychoanalytic Inquiry. She is a graduate of the New York University Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis and is in private practice in psychoanalysis and individual and couple therapy.
Karen Myers, Executive Director, has been with the PRC for the past 16 years. She is an independent Ethnographic Researcher in the areas of sociology, anthropology, political science and religion and works with several colleges, universities and other organizations in their national and international research projects. She works with Dr. Waldron in the administration of the PRC as well as the research and development of the database of recorded psychoanalytic sessions.