Brian Koehler was presented with ISPS honorary lifetime membership at the ISPS 2024 conference, in appreciation of his contributions to ISPS and to the field of psychosocial approaches to psychosis.

Brian has taught at New York University (in two graduate departments and one post-doctoral program), City University of New York and Columbia University (in two graduate departments, clinical psychology and neuroscience), as well as at Long Island University. Prior to this, he taught psychotherapeutic approaches to persons suffering from distressing voices and beliefs to medical students through the New York College of Osteopathic Medicine, as well as teaching psychiatric residents PGY 2-4 at St. Barnabas Hospital, Bronx, NY.

Brian has given talks on the neuroscience of stress, social factors in psychosis, and psychotherapy of persons experiencing distressing beliefs and voices at New York State Psychiatric Institute/Columbia University, Johns Hopkins University (Neuroscience Study Group), Bellevue Medical Center/ NYU Langone Medical Center, and various city and state psychiatric hospitals, as well as universities and organizations in many countries,

Brian did an eight-year Postdoc in the NYU Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis Program and a one-year certificate program in Psychoanalytic Supervision at NYU.

Brian is Associate Editor for the ISPS international journal “Psychosis: Psychological, Social and Integrative Approaches” from its inception. He is a co-founder and past president of the International Society for the Psychological and Social Approaches to Psychosis- United States Chapter (ISPS-US, www.isps-us.org) and served on the Executive Board of the international ISPS (www.isps.org ) for years. Brian co-chaired ISPS’s New York City conference in 2015, and has been a long time and much valued contributor to the ISPS email discussion groups. He has especially worked to change the term “schizophrenia,” as stigmatizing and unscientific.(Sign the petition here: https://www.change.org/p/american-psychiatric-association-apa-who-drop-and-

Brian has served as a scientific advisor and reviewer for Schizophrenia Bulletin when it was published by the NIMH, as well as several other journals including the International Journal of Psychoanalysis, Psychoanalytic Dialogues, etc. He has published many articles in peer-reviewed journals and books. Brian’s long-term research interests include developmental traumatology, the effects of chronic stress and social isolation/social defeat on the brain and body, psychosis from a non-reductionistic perspective of DNA to Neighborhood, and medications for psychosis (“antipsychotics”). Brian has worked towards changing and challenging the stigmatising term Schizophrenia in a number of articles.

Brian is a faculty member and supervisor at the NYU Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis and faculty member at the Institute for Contemporary Psychotherapy. Previously, he was a faculty member at the Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Study Center, the Manhattan Institute of Psychoanalysis, and the Center for Modern Psychoanalysis. He occasionally participated in an international CBTp study group led by the late founder of cognitive therapy Aaron Beck MD.

Brian has worked in city and state psychiatric hospitals and clinics and was given the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Award in the 1990s by the NYS Office of Mental Health at Rockland Psychiatric Center.

In the 1970’s and 80’s Brian volunteered in many NYC shelters and ‘soup kitchens’ for persons who were unhoused, children with severe autism in an inpatient unit at a state hospital, and helping persons who were migrant workers from Central and South America to organize a union (United Farm Workers) under the leadership of Cesar Chavez and his brother Richard Chavez. He has been in private practice as a psychotherapist, psychoanalyst and psychotherapy/psychoanalytic supervisor for over 40 years in Manhattan and Westchester County.

Biography by Alf Gillham