Biography

My skills are in the following areas:

• Psychiatric evaluation, and in-depth or time-limited psychotherapy and/or psychopharmacology (medication) for adults, children, and adolescents.
• These cases may involve medical, psychiatric, and/or psychosocial disorders
• Treatment of complex psychiatric/medical-psychiatric cases. Often these are cases the treatment of which has failed previously

I have practiced and taught in the San Francisco Bay Area for over thirty-five years. I am board certified by the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology in both general psychiatry and child/adolescent psychiatry. I have authored many professional articles and six books with another in preparation, and speak regularly to both U.S. and international audiences. My method of evaluation and treatment, which I call the “Medical-Psychiatric Coordinating Physician Method” is elaborated in my books:

-Complexity in Health Care: Underestimated Factors Impacting Outcome (Springer International, in process)

-Integrated Care for Complex Patients:  A Narrative Medicine Approach (2018, Springer International)

-Comprehensive Care for Complex Patients: The Medical-Psychiatric Coordinating Physician Model (2014, Cambridge University Press)

–Evidence from Within: A Paradigm for Clinical Practice (2008, Rowman and Littlefield),

–Making Psychotherapy Work: Collaborating Effectively with Your Patient (2007, The Psychosocial Press [An imprint of International Universities Press])

–Hidden Faults: Recognizing and Resolving Therapeutic Disjunctions (2000, The Psychosocial Press)

–Intricate Engagements: The Collaborative Basis of Therapeutic Change (1995, Jason Aronson; 2004, Rowman and Littlefield)

I graduated from Yale University Medical School, and was a National Institute of Mental Health research fellow in pharmacology at Stanford University Medical School. I did my post graduate training (residency and fellowship) in psychiatry at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), Mount Zion Hospital and Medical Center where I later joined the academic faculty. Early in my career I completed psychoanalytic training, achieving advanced certification. I am a clinical associate professor at the University of California Medical School in San Francisco; an active member of the INTERMED Foundation in Amsterdam; and am currently a co-principal investigator for the INTERMED self assessment (IMSA) validation study at the  University of California, San Francisco. I also head the Center for Collaborative Medicine, Psychiatry, and Psychology in Kentfield, California. I am a Distinguished Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association and Fellow of the Academy of Psychosomatic Medicine and have been voted by peers to Best Doctors in America most years since 1987. My current research interest is in the area of understanding and treating complex clinical problems. Last, but not at all least, I have four wonderful grown children all of whom have produced (lovable) grandchildren.

To learn more about my work, please visit my Books & Articles page.