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 what Freud calls “anxiety situations” — in relationships, families, workplaces, institutions, 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 spoke to Leslie Jamison about the project here. 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.” More on that book here.
In 2024 I left NYU to join the clinical faculty of the Columbia University Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research, where I teach classical and contemporary theory and technique. I’m also a fellow at the DeWitt Wallace Institute of Psychiatry at Weill Cornell, where the focus is on history, policy, and the arts. I serve on the boards of the Foundation for Community Psychoanalysis and the New York Institute for the Humanities.
I supervised five doctoral students in my time at NYU. Three went on to academic careers (Berkeley, New School, Harvard); two became analysts. Consultations are available for those considering either path.