Professional Training
At Wesleyan University, Susan Bodnar majored in anthropology and American studies and continued those studies at the graduate level at New York University, She then received her PhD from the clinical psychology department at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.At Beth Israel Hospital she learned short-term dynamic therapy as well as cognitive behavioral techniques. Later, she pursued a post-doctoral fellowship in medical psychology at Roosevelt Hospital and then psychoanalytic training at the William Alanson White Institute.
In the early 1990s Susan worked with people who had HIV or AIDS. At a time when the circumstances were extraordinary, she learned the value of looking beyond the ordinary for real solutions to dire problems; hence the origin of her blog, Ordinary Earth, and an approach that includes examining a person’s physiological constitution in relationship to families of origin, cultures and physical environments.
Susan teaches and supervises in the clinical and counseling psychology department of Teacher’s College at Columbia University. She shares her ideas with academic and non-academic audiences through writing and presentations, and currently serves as an associate editor for Psychoanalytic Dialogues and on the editorial board of Contemporary Psychoanalysis.
Nowadays, conversations around the kitchen table have been replaced with the commercial enterprise of psychotherapy. Having grown up straddling many different cultures – from rural working class life to places like the Philippines, Mexico, Europe and New York City – the best of many worlds informs how Dr. Bodnar sees any one individual. Sometimes anyone could use a little time with someone who can see the expanse of life from ocean to ocean, and from language to language, and from heart to heart.