Dr. Deena Harris is an Assistant Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons and The New York State Psychiatric Institute and a faculty analyst at The Columbia Center for Psychoanalytic Study and Research. She is in private practice in Manhattan.
She has an interest in transmission of trauma, Holocaust studies, and treatment of trauma, PTSD.and conflict resolution. She has been part of TRT, a group made up of descendents of victims and perpetrators from the Holocaust. The group has extended its work to include victims and perpetrators of conflicts in Northern Ireland, South Africa and Palestine/Israel.
Dr. Harris is interested in applying analytic principles to her work with groups to establish paradigms for peace and rebuilding in the aftermath of conflict. This includes exploration of memory, memorializing, witnessing, and story-telling, on a grass roots level, and issues of Truth Commissions, reparations, policies, and programs on a political level. She has worked with victims of local trauma such as 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina as well as with governments in looking at needs in rebuilding. In addition to TRT, she is a member of the International Psychoanalytical Association Committees on the UN, and on Prejudice.
“I am the daughter of a Holocaust survivor from Dusseldorf Germany, grew up in a fairly closed New England town and always had an interest in what made people and things work. From a young age I thought about survival, the Holocaust, and prejudice and racism. In college I was a research assistant at Harvard School for Public Health where I became very interested in the situation of Foreign Medical Students in the US. I eventually found my way to psychiatry after medical school and then psychoanalysis. I have a private practice and am a member of an NGO committee of the International Psychoanalytic Association at the UN. Our goals are to bring psychoanalytic thinking to the UN, and to bring global awareness to psychoanalysts. the experience this summer in Breisach is personally meaningful as it brings me closer to participating in a healing and continuation of a community obviously affected by the Holocaust.
The idea of introducing dance students to these ideas is very important and I am honored to be part of this historic event. I am married to an Emergency Physician and have 2 daughters. Interestingly, both speak Hebrew and are now learning Arabic!”