Licensed Clinical Psychologist

I’ve been haunted by the death of two people I knew this this past month. My friend and colleague, A. And my elder stepson from my first marriage. A was a gifted psychotherapist , former Dance therapist with a solid marriage to a lovely man, she marched to her own drummer, was always full of energy and curious about everything. The last time I saw her we were walking around my neighborhood in the many pocket parks. She had an encyclopedic knowledge about plants and we found a... wild garden She identified a rare lettuce plant, we picked the leaves, washed them and munched away- delicious. She had just finished her advanced training as a child therapist. She took her own life. I will never understand, but I will always remember ebullient A. The second person was P. Who died of a heart attack at age 65. P was a troubled , angry man who managed to raise, along with his wife a wonderful son. P and. N knew each other from the time they were 14 years old and their commitment lasted until he died. In the last months of his life he began to soften and in more years than he could recall, told his father, my ex, that he loved him. That single statement erased much of my puzzlement and distance from P. My heart goes out to N and D. My ex and I spoke at length about P. Although he did some really bad things in his life, he still had a good heart that was overwhelmed by his personal demons. We never know what will happen from moment to moment and throughout our lives. The best we can do is to be aware and present NOW- it’s very rich and freeing. It’s not easy to do, but if we practice everyday then worlds will open up and our locus of control changes from our own hands into the viscissitudes of the endless river of living- enjoy the ride

Teenage and Adults, General practice: depression, anxiety, relationships with specialty in Trauma Therapy. Trauma is any event which overcomes our ability to cope with. Most common issues are childhood abuse, neglect, sexual assault, trafficking, domestic abuse, mental ill family member, early loss, rape, family substance abuse, or untoward events like 9/11, sudden catestrophic events, serious illness. I have trained in this area with such experts as Yael Danieli, Bessel Van ...der Kolk and Judith Herman. I graduated with a Ph.D. In Clinical Psychology from Rutgers University, interned at Albert Einstein College of Medicine with Fred Pine, was awarded a two- year NIMH fellowship grant to continue my studies in the Psych. emergency room, adult out and inpatient centers, liaison to child psychiatry and general medical services. I have worked in inpatient and outpatient units at LIJ and as a supervisor, team leader member at New York Hospital Westchester Dividion of adolescent and child Psychiatry with Paulina Kernberg. I was a co/author with Dr Kernberg on a text treating Conduct Disordered children. I conducted research for the section on individual psychotherapy for this section of the text which I presented at the American Association of Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy in 1986. I have published several research papers and wrote a chapter in Dr. Danieli’s text On the Ground 9/11. I also assisted Dr. Danieli in editing sections of several of her books. Because of my Trauma training, I appear as a guest expert on television for the past 18 years on Network shows and was a regular on the Nancy Grace show about crime on Headline News for 16 years , as well as CNN, MSNBC, The Early show on CBS, Fox News, ABC NEWS, WPIX, etc. I have appeared on numerous radio shows as well. I studied Forensic Psychology at John Jay College of Criminal Justice as I was doing many legal TV shows and served as an expert witness in Civil and Criminal NY Courts. I am currently in full- time private practice after 16 years serving as Clinical Director at Community based mental health centers. . See more

BLOG There is so much bigotry, confusion, hatred and the LGBTI community demonstrating internationally for equal rights. Let’s start with the basics: what is Gender? To the simple minded, it is either female or male. Females have the XX chromosome and males have the XY chromosome. The human fertilized egg is female until the XY chromosome is expressed. There is some growing genetic research suggesting that the Y part of the chromosome is showing more anomalies and decreas...e in size over centuries. We don’t know what the implications of these observed and quantified changes mean. Gender is understood in two ways: gender identification and sexual orientation. These variables are consider orthogonal ( at a right angle) to each other: not correlated. There are two distinct nuclei in the brain: one determines gender, the other gender orientation or sexual preference. A more reasonable way to look at these genetic overviews is that they are on SPECTRUM. Some studies have shown consistently that the autopsied brains of Gay men look more like female gender preference and those of Lesbian women look more like the male nuclei in gender preference. There is a similar parallel with Gender identification. These nuclei in transsexual men look more like the female nuclei and in transgendered women, the density of neurons looks more like the straight male nuclei. Trash the old Psychoanalytic and social behavioral theories of gender identification and sexual preference. Bury the Pray away the Gay absurdity. People are born with these variations in genetics. There are many combinations of Gender identity and sexual preference-they are biologically determined. There are men who’s sense of core self is female and women who’s core identity is male. There are those who identify with their genetic programming- women who feel like women and men who identify as male, but their sexual preferences are same-sex. You can’t argue genetics. There are people who identify with their genetic gender but prefer both sexes - the bi- sexual. There are more rare people who are born with mixed genitalia-in the recent past a Gender was assigned to them by physicians and many grew up miserable and confused about their identity and preferences. Sex is genetically determined by biology, not what our fundamentally Puritan society demands. How many have been murdered, shunned, bullied and treated as less than because of their innate biology??? It is our shame as human beings that we allow this to happen. See more

PSYCHBLOG My other blogs are on my home page. This morning I want to write about being very concerned about what other people think of you. I’m not talking about work- there are work protocols that most adhere to and either put on the work mask or just listen when your boss is nasty, unreasonable, rude, too demanding or spills their personal life to you. When I worked as Clinical Director at a place and job I loved, boss was an alcoholic, misogynist, a wife abuser, grandio...Continue reading

Please feel free to write any feedback about our work together or If you just have any questions( not too personal!) that I might be able to help you with. If you want answers about my training and experience, ask away!

ii. Le temps, la durée Because eventually, it happens: you step outside the frame, beyond the calendar of the lovely quotidian, where suburbanized nature ticks ...off the young weeksthe early cherry and star magnolia, Confederate jasmine and ornamental pear, the dogwood with its alleged stigmata, beyond Shrovetide and Easter, to become that ultimate, unregenerate you. *** Lee Passarella is a founding member and senior literary editor of Atlanta Review and acted as editor-in-chief of FutureCycle Poetry and Coreopsis Books. His poetry has appeared in Chelsea, Cream City Review, Louisville Review, The Sun, Antietam Review, Journal of the American Medical Association, The Formalist, Cortland Review, and many other periodicals. Recent publications include Concho River Review, Stickman Review, and Rock & Sling. Swallowed up in Victory, Passarella’s long narrative poem based on the American Civil War, was published by White Mane Books in 2002. In addition, he has published two other books of poetry: The Geometry of Loneliness (David Roberts Books) and Sight-Reading Schumann (Pudding House Publications).