BIOGRAPHY

Like David Copperfield, I was born. Unlike David Copperfield, I was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin in 1953. I moved to Fond du Lac, Wisconsin at the age of four and grew up there; I am a proud graduate of Lowell P. Goodrich High School (sometimes known as Fondy High).

I started the University of Wisconsin-Madison as an applied piano major, which means I spent several hours each day playing scales, Bach preludes and fugues, and Chopin etudes. After a time, I decided the world did not need another classical pianist (or at least did not need me to do that, which is not quite the same thing). I eventually took a degree from Madison in American history.

In Boston after graduation, I surprised myself by plying the only trade I knew: playing the piano. I worked as a rehearsal and performance pianist for ballet and modern dance companies and schools, including the Cambridge School of Ballet, the Walnut Hill School, the Concert Dance Company, and the Boston Conservatory. I also studied the ancient art of piano tuning and worked in an after-school program in a working-class suburb of Boston. I became more and more interested in children- in how they think, and how they feel- and so decided to study them full time.

So I began my masters’ degree at Tufts, in the distinguished Eliot-Pearson Department of Child Study. From there, I went on to work as a research assistant at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and the Research Institute for Educational Problems in Cambridge. I got my masters’ from Tufts in 1981 and my PhD in psychology from Clark University in Worcester in 1985. I also did my pre-doctoral internship at Boston’s Beth Israel Hospital, where I held the lofty title (as did all trainees) of Instructor in Psychology at Harvard Medical School. But it’s true…I did instruct Harvard medical students in psychology, although, like all medical students, they were kind of sleepy.

After receiving my PhD I went to Stockbridge, Mass. and completed a four-year post-doctoral fellowship at the Austen Riggs Center, a long-term psychiatric hospital. I left beloved Boston for the newly-beloved Berkshires, where I have remained ever since. I opened my private practice in 1987, and also held various clinical posts, including a stint as the Chief Psychologist on a locked psychiatric unit and serving as a staff psychologist at a community mental health center. I returned to teaching with a brief sojourn at Smith College School for Social Work in the late 1980s and then to Bennington College beginning in 1999. At Bennington, I teach courses in abnormal and clinical psychology and the psychology of creativity.

I am a member of Division 39 (the Division of Psychoanalysis) of the American Psychological Association, and a member of the editorial board of Psychoanalytic Psychology. Most of my academic publications (see selected list below) have been in the areas of play and creativity in relation to contemporary psychotherapy.

What else can I say? I am married to Kelley DeLorenzo, whom I met at Tufts. We have two grown-up children: Francesca, a doctoral student in violin at Juilliard, and Peter Lorenzo, a cellist in the Phoenix Symphony. We live in a small, safe town with lovely eccentric neighbors, clean water and dark, dark skies at night. Like David Copperfield, things for me have turned out pretty well so far.