Steven Berkowitz, MD

steven-berkowitz

Bio

Steven Berkowitz, MD is a Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist and an Associate Professor of Clinical Psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania, Department of Psychiatry where he arrived after 15 years on the faculty at the Yale University Child Study Center. At Yale he was the Director of Child Community Services and Deputy Director of the National Center for Children Exposed to Violence and the State of Connecticut’s Intensive In Home Child and Adolescent Service IICAPS.

The Quote

Make opportunity out of crisis
Anonymous

What Led to the Specialization of Trauma?

Steven talks about his childhood and being driven into this field by illness and having undergone multiple medical procedures. In addition Steven shares his family’s history, and up until the age of sixteen years old being influenced by having three living grandparents each of whom escaped the pogroms in what was then the Ukraine and each of whom were traumatized as a result.

A Crucial Early Mistake

Steven talks about an early experience working with a young boy and not being as directive with the child as he should have been and in so doing, colluding with the young client’s avoidance.

Steven’s Why

I benefit tremendously when I am able to have an impact that helps children and families get on the best developmental path that they can.

Steven’s Advice

Get into your own therapy
This is not work that anyone can do alone. Get people around you with whom you can share and from whom you can learn.

Steven’s go-to books

The Anna Freud Tradition: Lines of Development – Evolution and Theory and Practice Over the Decades (Lines of Development Series), Norka T. Malberg
Developmental Psychopathology, Theory and Method . Volume 1.(WILEY SERIES ON PERSONALITY PROCESSES), Donald J. Cohen