The UC San Francisco Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences will host its 17th Robert S. Wallerstein, MD Lectureship in Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy on Wednesday, April 12, 2023, from 1:00-4:00 p.m. at the UCSF Nancy Friend Pritzker Psychiatry Building. The event's keynote lecture, "Recovery From Psychological Damage Caused by Trauma and Loss," will be delivered by UCSF Distinguished Professor of Psychiatry Mardi Horowitz, MD.
Immediately following Horowitz's presentation will be a discussion led by Kathryn DeWitt, PhD; Jonathan Shedler, PhD; and Joseph A. Zamaria, PsyD, ABPP, followed by a question and answer session for audience participants. The first two hours of the event (including the lecture and discussion) will also be streamed live online via Zoom.
Noted clinical researcher brings decades of expertise
Horowitz has served on the faculty at UCSF since 1972 and is the author of 20 professional books in the fields of psychology, psychiatry, and psychoanalysis. He has provided forensic consultations in the fields of PTSD, stress, personality, and psychotherapy. In addition, he has provided consultation to the media and governmental agencies as a highly respected clinician, researcher, and educator.
He is a past president of the San Francisco Center for Psychoanalysis and the International Society for Psychotherapy Research. Horowitz has directed the NIMH Center for the Study of Neuroses and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation’s Program on Conscious and Unconscious Mental Processes, and is a founding member of the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies and the Society to Explore Psychotherapy Integration.
He has received numerous awards, including the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies' Pioneer Award (1983) for his achievements in developing the diagnoses of PTSD and disorders of complicated grief, and the American Psychiatric Association (APA)'s Foundation's Fund Prize (1980) for "distinguished contribution to an understanding of the psychological processes following serious life events and of the adaptive changes facilitated by psychotherapy.” Horowitz has also been honored with the J. Elliott Royer Award in Psychiatry (1977), the Northern California Psychiatric Society's Outstanding Achievement Award (1989), and the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies' Lifetime Achievement Award (2004). He was named an APA Distinguished Life Fellow in 2000.
Horowitz's seminal book, Stress Response Syndromes: PTSD, Grief, Adjustment, and Dissociative Disorders, is now in its fifth edition and has been published in multiple languages. He has written numerous other professional books — including States of Mind: Configurational Analysis of Individual Personality, Personality Styles and Brief Psychotherapy, Nuances of Technique in Dynamic Psychotherapy, Identity and the New Psychoanalytic Explorations of Self-Organization, and Adult Personality Growth in Psychotherapy; — as well as more than 280 scientific articles in the fields of psychiatry, psychology, and psychotherapy. He has also published two books written for a nonprofessional audience, A Course in Happiness and Grieving as Well as Possible.
In addition to his scholarly and professional pursuits, Horowitz trained at the San Francisco School of Fine Art (now known as the San Francisco Art Institute) and is a member of ICB Artists Association in Sausalito. He is skilled in drawing, oils, and sumi-e painting, and many of his works have lined the hallways and offices of the Langley Porter Psychiatric Hospital for a number of years.
Lecture series honors former department chair and distinguished psychoanalytic leader
Each year, the UCSF Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences invites a distinguished scholar to speak on campus as part of its special lecture series is held in honor of the late Robert S. Wallerstein, MD (1921–2014). First held in 2006, the annual series focuses on showcasing psychoanalytic knowledge and clinical expertise that influence psychiatry, psychotherapy, and psychoanalysis. Past speakers have included featured noted clinicians and researchers such as Otto Kernberg, MD; Beatrice Beebe, PhD; Mark Solms, PhD; and Bessel A. van der Kolk, MD.
Wallerstein was a distinguished psychiatrist, psychotherapy researcher, and psychoanalytic leader who left a legacy of a widened scope of theory and technique in the psychological sectors of psychiatry. He was an administrator who advocated for cooperation between psychiatrists, psychologists, and social workers in achieving academic excellence and sought to develop a new profession, the Doctor of Mental Health. Wallerstein also developed a departmental structure that worked across professional lines, leading to new ideas on research centers, educational plans, and high quality service delivery.
He trained at the Menninger Foundation in Topeka, Kansas, rising to become the foundation’s director of research and conducting a pioneering study called the Psychotherapy Research Project. He moved to the Bay Area in 1966 as the chief of psychiatry at Mount Zion Hospital, then joined the faculty of the UCSF Department of Psychiatry as a professor. Wallerstein served as department chair and director of the Langley Porter Psychiatric Institute from 1975–1985, as well as a training and supervising analyst at the San Francisco Psychoanalytic Institute, and president of both the American and International Psychoanalytic Associations.
In addition, he was a prodigious and influential author who penned 20 books and more than 400 scholarly articles. His books included Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis: Theory, Practice, Research (1975), Becoming a Psychoanalyst (1981), Forty-Two Lives in Treatment (1986), The Talking Cures: The Psychoanalyses and the Psychotherapies (1995), Lay Analysis: Life Inside the Controversy (1998), Psychoanalysis: Clinical and Theoretical (1999), and Psychoanalysis: Education, Research, Science, and Profession (2003). In recognition of his outstanding contributions to the field of psychoanalysis, he received the prestigious Sigourney Award in 1991.
Free tickets now available online
The Wallerstein Lectureship event is free, but advance registration is requested. For further information, visit psychiatry.ucsf.edu/wallerstein or email [email protected].
About UCSF Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences
The UCSF Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and the Langley Porter Psychiatric Institute are among the nation's foremost resources in the fields of child, adolescent, adult, and geriatric mental health. Together they constitute one of the largest departments in the UCSF School of Medicine and the UCSF Weill Institute for Neurosciences, with a mission focused on research (basic, translational, clinical), teaching, patient care, and public service.
UCSF Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences conducts its clinical, educational, and research efforts at a variety of locations in Northern California, including the UCSF Nancy Friend Pritzker Psychiatry Building; UCSF Langley Porter Psychiatric Hospital; UCSF Medical Centers at Parnassus Heights, Mission Bay, and Mount Zion; UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospitals in San Francisco and Oakland; Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center; the San Francisco VA Health Care System; UCSF Fresno; and numerous community-based sites around the San Francisco Bay Area.
About the UCSF Weill Institute for Neurosciences
The UCSF Weill Institute for Neurosciences, established by the extraordinary generosity of Joan and Sanford I. "Sandy" Weill, brings together world-class researchers with top-ranked physicians to solve some of the most complex challenges in the human brain.
The UCSF Weill Institute leverages UCSF’s unrivaled bench-to-bedside excellence in the neurosciences. It unites three UCSF departments—Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Neurology, and Neurological Surgery—that are highly esteemed for both patient care and research, as well as the Neuroscience Graduate Program, a cross-disciplinary alliance of nearly 100 UCSF faculty members from 15 basic-science departments, as well as the UCSF Institute for Neurodegenerative Diseases, a multidisciplinary research center focused on finding effective treatments for Alzheimer’s disease, frontotemporal dementia, Parkinson’s disease, and other neurodegenerative disorders.
About UCSF
The University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) is exclusively focused on the health sciences and is dedicated to promoting health worldwide through advanced biomedical research, graduate-level education in the life sciences and health professions, and excellence in patient care. UCSF Health, which serves as UCSF’s primary academic medical center, includes top-ranked specialty hospitals and other clinical programs, and has affiliations throughout the Bay Area.
