About
A clinician and a writer, working where the two meet.
I was born in the Bronx, and I have spent my life trying to make sense of what happens between people: in bed, in families, in therapy rooms, and on the page. The thread that runs through all of it is a stubborn belief that the inner life is political, that healing is creative, and that nobody has to do it alone.
I studied English at Columbia College, finishing in 1981, then pursued doctoral work at New York University and fell into the downtown performance art world. With Tim Miller and others I helped found Highways Performance Space in Santa Monica, where I sat on the board and made touring troupes, Queer Rites and Jew Meat, out of the raw material of gay life under the shadow of the epidemic. I worked as a journalist and a critic, and in 1994 St. Martin's Press published my first novel, Sacred Lips of the Bronx.
I am a licensed marriage and family therapist, license 40003, trained in the depth tradition. My doctorate, from Pacifica Graduate Institute, included a psychoanalytic reading of Nietzsche, and my practice draws on Freud and Jung, on alchemy and the shadow, alongside the trauma-informed, existential, and somatic work that meets people where they actually live. I am in formal psychoanalytic training, because the learning does not stop.
For nearly two decades I taught at Antioch University, where I founded the nation's first LGBT Specialization in Clinical Psychology and trained a generation of therapists to lead with intellect and heart. In 2011 I co-founded the Colors LGBTQ Youth Counseling Center, a place built on the conviction that justice and care belong in the same room. That same conviction runs through everything I am building now under the banner of Psychology for the People: a press, a Substack, and a set of classes that bring depth psychology back into the culture, one psyche at a time.
Even your defenses are trying to protect something sacred.Douglas Sadownick
Graduated in English, then on to doctoral studies at New York University.
Co-founded the Santa Monica space with Tim Miller and made the touring troupes Queer Rites and Jew Meat.
First novel, published by St. Martin's Press, later reissued for its thirtieth anniversary.
Founded the nation's first LGBT Specialization in Clinical Psychology.
Co-founded a counseling home rooted in justice, inclusion, and care.
A press, a Substack, and live classes, alongside Healing Gay Sex and Love and the serialized Gay Hero's Journey.
