As co-founder (with Hinda Winawer, LCSW, Executive Director)of The Center for Family, Community, and Social Justice, Inc. in Princeton, NJ, we have developed a model of context-centered Family Systems Counseling ("Family Empowerment Program")that is operating in 20+ of the economically most disadvantaged urban school systems in New Jersey. The model is unique and innovative as it is culturally sensitive, informed by a social justice perspective, gives state-of-the-art training to young "minority" professionals enabling them to seek leadership positions in their fields, and functions as an alternative to the current "mental health system".
I have spent many summers as a boy with my parents, as a university student, and as an adult with family and friends climbing and hiking in the Dolomite Mountains, part of the Italian Alps. This is an area of challenging rock climbing, of ancient and modern cultural groups and languages, of myths and legends, and also of insane hand-to-hand combat between German and Italian mountaineer-solders during World War I. The majestic grandeur of the Dolomite Mountains and the simplicity of the "mountain farmers'" life there conveyed to me strength, resilience, and courage to overcome obstacles, as well as many personal memories.
I am passionately interested in two developments:
1. The theoretical and clinical foundation, expansion, and professional acceptance of an alternative practice to the current "mental health services system". The latter, in my view, is individualistic, does many people a disservice, is not strength oriented, and as a replica of the medical model is unscientific and a health hazard because of the current epidemic of psychiatric medications, especially for children and adolescents.
2. I am passionately committed together with my friends at the Center and other colleagues to help introduce social justice considerations into the process of social service "delivery". Genuine collaboration, cultural competence, viewing people as Subjects, not diagnosable and treatable objects would be a start.
Currently, I serve as Director of Training, at the Center for Family, Community, and Social Justice, Inc., Princeton, NJ. Together with Hinda Winawer, LCSW, Executive Director, I am co-founder of the Center which serves students and their families in 20+ schools in New Jersey’s economically most disadvantaged urban neighborhoods. “Family Empowerment Teams”, mainly drawn from populations that are not yet well represented within the corps of counseling professionals, receive intensive training by Center faculty in a culturally competent, context-centered, and justice oriented counseling model that supports students’ and families’ strengths and resources so that young people of all cultures and social classes can graduate high school, stay out of the criminal (in)justice system, have supportive families, and achieve their educational goals.
Formerly, I taught couples and family therapy as a visiting professor at the Graduate School of Applied and Professional Psychology, Rutgers University. Before moving to the US, I was assistant professor at the Heidelberg School of Medicine.
I am particularly interested in issues of justice in clinical practice, in community peace initiatives to prevent youth gang related violence, and in alternative, i.e. non-psychiatric, ways of assisting people diagnosed with what is commonly thought of as “mental illness”.
