Background and Biographical Information

​I completed my Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from Georgia State University in 1994.  My dissertation was entitiled “The Son’s Experience of Significant Disappointment in His Father.”  I was licensed by the State of Georgia in 1995. 

In addition to having a private psychology practice, I teach at Paideia School, and have been for the past 40 years.  There, I have worked with all different levels of the school, but for the past 28 years, I have worked primarily in the high school, where I teach an English course, and spend the lion’s share of my time working with adolescents and sometimes their parents. 

While I minored in psychology as an undergraduate, at that time in my life, I majored in English, finding that literature provided more of what I hungered for. I am drawn to the creative arts, to imagination, poetry, and dreams.  These are not my primary lenses, but they do inform much of what I do and how I see people and the world. 

I have three children, ages 33, 31, and 27.  Raising them has been one of the most important parts of my life; they have taught me incredible amounts about patience, communication, and joy.  I have been long interested in male development and in the role of fathers and in the way that men form and act in relationships, whether familial, romantic, or friendship.  

Over the past 30 years, I have participated in several workshops and weekends with people like Robert Bly, Michael Meade, James Hillman, and John Lee.  I was also in a long lasting men’s support group.  This has led me right up to the present to being now very interested in helping men improve their relational skills.  Being a father came easier to me than being a husband or a partner, and I have worked hard to improve.   A loving, partner relationship is achievable; as Terry Real says, "Intimacy is not something you have, it is something you do."  You have to keep creating it.  This is something that I try to work at every day.  

In the fall of 2012, my wife died of ovarian cancer.  I will never be the same.  I don't want to be too glib by trying to encapsulate in a small space what that was like, but looking back now, it was a devastating period that actually highlighted the experience of love. 

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significant volunteer work

• 7 years as an inline hockey coach.   I have always loved sports.  Winning is lots of fun, but for me it has always been about the pleasure of play and the building of mutually supportive team dynamics.  I am also interested in how losing tests our characters so much more than coming out on top. 

• 2 years with Because We Have Daughters, a program sponsored by Men Stopping Violence, working to help fathers improve their relationships with their daughters

​workshops

“The Healing Poem:  Discovery, Delight, and Soul in Poem-Making”

• Georgia Psychological Association Annual Convention, Jekyll Island, GA.  May 31, 2008

• Atlanta Vet Center, presented to women veterans, April 2008

“Couples Communication”- 6 week communication skills workshop

• Atlanta Vet Center, presented to veterans, Fall 2007.