An Interview of Stephen Aizenstat by Angela Borda, Part I of II

Stephen Aizenstat, speaking at the Barrett Center, Pacifica

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Part III of III

by Angela Borda

I was fortunate to recently sit down with Professor Bennett, an integral member of Pacifica’s faculty, for many years the Co-Chair of the M.A. in Counseling Psychology, and now the Chair of a new program Pacifica will be proud to offer in Fall 2020, the PsyD in Counseling Psychology. This is part 3 of a three-part interview.

How long is the PsyD Program and is clinical training required?

The PsyD is designed to be completed in four years total: three years of curriculum plus one year of pre-doctoral internship. The PsyD will require students to complete 1000 hours of practicum, generally during years two and three of the program, followed by 1500 hours of internship generally taking up year four of the program. Read More

Part II of III

By Angela Borda

I was fortunate to recently sit down with Professor Bennett, an integral member of Pacifica’s faculty, for many years the Co-Chair of the M.A. in Counseling Psychology, and now the Chair of a new program Pacifica will be proud to offer in Fall 2020, the PsyD in Counseling Psychology. This is part 2 of a three-part interview.

what is so unique about the new PsyD in Counseling Psychology program?

It’s a rare opportunity to get doctoral level training in applied professional psychology that’s informed by psychodynamic depth-psychological principles. I would say that psychodynamic perspectives have become scarce in higher education, and this program uniquely combines an applied clinical focus to valuable perspectives that reflect the role of the unconscious and imaginal to our individual and collective psychological lives. I would say that the new PsyD reflects the momentum of a long-established highly successful M.A. program that has a proven history of providing both sophisticated clinical training that allows graduates to hit the ground running in a variety of applied clinical settings, while also training our students to be able to tolerate strong emotional experiences and to develop and elaborate capacities for interpersonal attunement.

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Part I of III

By Angela Borda

I was fortunate to recently sit down with Professor Bennett, an integral member of Pacifica’s faculty, for many years the Co-Chair of the M.A. in Counseling Psychology, and now the Chair of a new program Pacifica will be proud to offer in Fall 2020, the PsyD in Counseling Psychology.

For those who may not know, please tell us the basics of what a PsyD is and how it differs from a PhD in psychology?

PsyD stands for “doctor of psychology” and it is one of the three doctoral degrees commonly earned by licensed psychologists (PhD, EdD, and PsyD).  as with the PhD degree, PsyD graduates are entitled to the “Doctor” form of address. The PsyD is based on the so-called “Vail Model” or scholar-practitioner model articulated at the 1973 Vail Conference on Professional Training in Psychology.  It was designed to represent doctoral degrees which are focused on clinical practice rather than research, and to address the academic and training requirements of such a focus.  In practice, psychologists with the PsyD, PhD, and EdD degrees show a lot of overlap in terms of what they do professionally.   

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By Matthew Bennett, Psy.D.

A feeling normally as individual as the ache of separation from those one loves suddenly became a feeling in which all shared alike and — together with fear — the greatest affliction of the long period of exile that lay ahead. —Camus, in The Plague (on quarantine)

We have been here before.

I’m going to eschew the contemporary technical terms: epidemic, pandemic, disease vectors.  “Plague” will do nicely.  We’ve only known what a pandemic is for a few decades, but we’ve known about plagues for many thousands of years.

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by Angela Borda

Some places you have to experience first-hand to understand just how special they are. The first thing you will notice about Pacifica is the beauty of our campuses: richly green, peaceful, a bounty of organic fruit trees, flowers, and the Santa Ynez Mountains rising above us. The campus at Lambert Road is a restored 1920’s-era estate, and higher up toward the mountains is the beautiful retreat of the Ladera Lane campus. One of these campuses will be the setting for your Pacifica Experience Day.

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An Interview of Pacifica President Joseph Cambray

by Angela Borda

Angela Borda: We are fortunate to have Dr. Peter Rojcewicz as our new provost, a post which you previously held in conjunction with the post of president. Please describe why Peter was your choice for provost. How is his background in psychology, administration, and poetry a good fit for Pacifica?

Dr. Joseph Cambray: While I made the final choice among the candidates for the position, I would extend this to say that Peter was Pacifica’s choice. We began with an extensive national search with two rounds of committees. The first one vetted the qualified applications and then the second, a selection committee developed criteria and choose the top two candidates to bring to Pacifica. We held a day and a half set of interviews with each of the candidates, in which we introduced them to the president’s council then the IMC. They each gave a presentation open to the entire community, town hall fashion, relating their vision and style of leadership as they would imagine it for Pacifica. 

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Montecito Journal's Steve Liebowitz's article on Pacifica alum Cheri Steinkellner and her new play, "Prima Materia." Cheri is a graduate of the Engaged Humanities and the Creative Life M.A. program at Pacifica Graduate Institute. 

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For the full schedule, visit cominghometopacifica.com.

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An interview by Angela Borda of Mary A. Wood & Susan Rowland, Pt. III of III

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