Columbia Faculty Provide Tools for Clinicians Focusing on Psychodynamics
Following George Floyd’s murder and nationwide protests police brutality, 11 members of the Columbia psychoanalytic community came together to study the ways that culture and society affect development and the way that bias affects psychodynamic formulation.
This group, which became the Psychodynamic Formulation Collective, has just published what they learned as Psychodynamic Formulation: An Expanded Approach, a second edition of an earlier book, Psychodynamic Formulation, both published by Wiley Blackwell.
The aim of book is to help mental health providers in all fields better understand their patients using psychodynamic formulations. Psychodynamic formulation can provide insight into how someone’s conscious and unconscious thoughts and feelings developed, and how they may be contributing to the person’s strengths and challenges. The latest edition includes an emphasis on the way that culture and society affect development, a focus on lived experience, and a discussion of how bias may contribute to the perpetuation of trauma.
All royalties from book sales will go to the Columbia Psychiatry’s Psychoanalytic Center's Margaret Morgan Lawrence fund, which will help fund psychoanalytic training of candidates from groups that have been traditionally underrepresented in medicine. Dr. Morgan Lawrence, who died in 2019 at age 105, attended medical school at Columbia, where she was the only Black student in her class and later enrolled the Columbia Psychoanalytic Center, as its first black trainee and obtained her certification in psychoanalysis. She was chief of the Developmental Psychiatry Service at Harlem Hospital for more than 20 years as well as associate clinical professor of psychiatry at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons.
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The members of the Psychodynamic Formulation Collective and co-authors include:
Shirin Ali, assistant clinical professor of psychiatry; Deborah L. Cabaniss, professor of clinical psychiatry, associate director of residency training, and director of psychotherapy training at Columbia; Sabrina Cherry, clinical professor of psychiatry and associate director and training and supervising analyst at the Columbia Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research; Angela Coombs, a former NYSPI resident and Director of OnTrackNY , now associate medical director at Alameda County Behavioral Health; Carolyn J. Douglas, associate clinical professor of psychiatry; Jack Drescher, a distinguished life fellow of the American Psychiatric Association and a clinical professor of psychiatry; Ruth Graver, an assistant clinical professor of psychiatry, who also teaches and supervises at the Columbia University Center for Psychoanalytic Teaching and Research where she is currently the co-chair of the Columbia Academy for Psychoanalytic Educators; Sandra Park, a training and supervising analyst at the Columbia University Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research and an assistant professor of psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medical Center; Aaron Reliford, a graduate of Columbia’s adult residency, child fellowship, and Psychoanalytic Center, now vice chair for diversity equity and inclusion and an associate clinical professor of child and adolescent psychiatry at New York University; Anna Schwartz, a clinical assistant professor of psychiatry at Columbia and faculty member of the Columbia University Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research; Susan Vaughan, who is finishing her term as director of the Columbia University Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research.