Alongside my clinical practice I’ve had a long career in academia, including nearly twenty years in NYU’s Department of Media, Culture, and Communication. I spent a lot of that time thinking about how communication breaks down — in relationships, workplaces, organizations, the wider world. Some of that work is now going into a book for Random House, tentatively titled The Gaslight Variations, about how people drive each other crazy. I’ve also written a book about paperwork, especially when things go wrong. The New York Review of Books called it “bright and sparkling … provocative, original, and a very good read.” The New York Times called it “eccentric.” There’s more about that book here.
In 2024 I left NYU to join the clinical faculty of the Columbia Psychoanalytic Center, where I teach theory and technique to early career analysts. I’m involved with several other projects as well: I’m on the interdisciplinary research faculty of the DeWitt Wallace Institute of Psychiatry at Weill Cornell, where the focus is on history, policy, and the arts. I’m one of the co-founders of the Foundation for Community Psychoanalysis, a clinical and cultural space in Downtown Brooklyn dedicated to making analysis more accessible. I’m an editorial advisor to Parapraxis, the magazine of the Psychosocial Foundation. I’m on the board of the New York Institute for the Humanities.
Of the five doctoral students I supervised in my years at NYU, three went on to academic careers (Berkeley, Harvard, the New School), two became analysts. I offer consultations for academics and other professionals considering retraining.