I am a Board Certified psychiatrist who specializes in psychotherapy. I practice in Berkeley, California and Have a consultation practice in Cambridge, Massachusetts. I am a Fellow of the Society for Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis, the American Society of Clinical Hypnosis, and the International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation. I am  the recipient of the American Society of Clinical Hypnosis and the Society of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis President's Award; an ASCH Award of Merit as an outstanding clinician, teacher, and author, and the Crasilneck Award for excellence in writing. I am also also the recipient of the Cornelia Wilbur Award for original contributions to the field of dissociation. In 2005 the Society for Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis  presented me with the Annual Shenk Award to the physician who has made significant contributions to the development of medical hypnosis and in 2007 the Roy M. Dorcus Award for the Best Clinical Paper published in the International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis.  I have been named as one of America's Top Psychiatrists for 2007, 2008, and 2009.

I have been on the faculties of several medical schools,  including  the Harvard Medical School and the Tufts University School of Medicine, and currently am Distinguished Consulting Faculty at Saybrook University in San Francisco where I am in the Graduate College of Psychology and Humanistic Studies. I am the San Francisco Bay Area Director for the International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociatiob Dissociative Disorders Training Program.

I am a Past Editor of the American Journal of Clinical Hypnosis.  and I am an Editorial Consultant for the International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis. I am the co-author of Healing the Divided Self: Clinical and Ericksonian Hypnotherapy for Post-Traumatic and Dissociative Conditions and Inner Strengths: Contemporary Psychotherapy and Hypnosis for Ego-Strengthening as well as books, chapters and peer reviewed articles. My fields of interest include hypnosis, ego-strengthening, developmental repair, trauma and dissociation, mind-body problems, Ego State Therapy, social construction therapies, working with difficult cases, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and issues with loss and grief, and death and dying. I am an Honorary Member of the British Society for Medical and Dental Hypnosis/Scotland and the  Canadian Federation of Hypnosis, Alberta Division. I teach nationally and internationally.