I am a psychoanalytically trained, consultation-liaison (psychosomatic medicine) psychiatrist, in private practice since 2003.

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I worked in ERs, medical-surgical floors and inpatient psychiatric units, in outpatient clinics and in intensive outpatient programs.​​​​

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While my formal training provided an abundance of great ingredients for my professional life, part of the personal touch, some of the colors and nuances come from my experiences growing up and living in Romania until graduation from medical school, then immigrating to the US.

 

Having lived in wildly different economic situations and political systems stirred my interest in the literature on liberty and tyranny and in Austrian economics—excellent complements to my formal training. I came to see that it would be difficult to try to free someone’s mind without a clear sense of what liberty means.

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Personal history exerts an influence on one's views of what mental health, normality, and sanity are. It also shapes ideas about which therapeutic approaches make sense, which might be harmful, and which may be distractions that only appear helpful.

 

​​​In my more than 20 years of practice, I have repeatedly found that my patients are my best teachers. This has motivated me throughout my career to maintain a practice centered on the depth of communication and insight necessary for an effective healing relationship.

 

The gratification that both my patients and I receive from such work has been, and continues to be, crucial in helping me resist the pressures of a psychiatric industry that incentivizes short visits, snap judgments, and prescriptions as first-line treatment for symptom clusters, often with little understanding of their causes, origins, or functions.