MarkDworkin.com

Mark Dworkin LCSW, P.C.
is a clinical social worker with over 30 years of experience in the mental health and substance abuse field. He works with adults and adolescents, in individual and marital therapy.

He treats people with problems of depression, anxiety, trauma, relationship problems, phobias, alcohol and drug issues, adult children raised in alcoholic homes, and survivors of sexual, physical, and emotional abuse.

He uses many different treatment approaches, including cognitive behavioral therapy, hypnosis, gestalt therapy, relational psychoanalytic therapy, a gentle but firm approach to people with substance abuse problems, and couples therapy.

He is best known for his work with trauma survivors using Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR). He is a trainer and consultant for the EMDR International Association, and a teacher for the EMDR Institute

Mark Dworkin LCSW, P.C. – Psychotherapist, Counselor, EMDR Trainer

In His Own Words:

I think that I was born to be a clinical social worker, or at least trained from a very early age by my mother who taught me the values of activism and caring for others. As a child of the 60′s I participated in the Civil Rights movement and the protests against the war in Viet Nam. I have also been influenced by the Human Potential Movement, though I do not think the movement “self actualized.”

After graduating from Boston University in January of 1973 I did what any hippy of the time would do. I moved to San Francisco. There I got my first job in the field of mental health working at the Peninsula Hospital in Burlingame, 17 miles to the south of San Francisco, as a “mental health aide.” I worked the swing shift from 3pm – 11pm on a psychiatric ward, and as a crisis worker in the emergency room. It was a good start.

After a year I felt that it was time to come home (I’ve always been a Bronx boy at heart).

I was hired in 1975 by the Bronx VA Medical Center where I first received training in early methods of cognitive behavioral therapy. I also started my lifelong pursuit of understanding the brain and how it functions. My teachers were Thomas Horvath MD, Ken Davis MD, Richard Mohs Ph.D, and many other fine psychiatrists, psychologists and social workers. It was a fertile period of my life and I appreciate the experiences each mental health professional gave me.

I began working with traumatized veterans, suffering from anxiety disorders, depression, trauma, and substance abuse as a result of the war in Viet Nam, which was just ending. The best models for working with traumatized people at the time was CBT, (the diagnosis of PTSD did not appear until 1980). I experienced my clients having flashbacks firsthand, especially because the VA was building a new medical center and was blasting through the granite rocks that were 30 feet below the surface, 100 yards away. Imagine how a combat veteran reacted. No amount of reassurance that they were safe was adequate. However I was able to teach them strategies of dealing with their reactions. It was quite an education.

During my 12 years working there I was influenced to apply and attend Columbia University School of Social Work. I completed my M.S. in Social Work in 1980, and continued working for the VA until 1987. The VA was an affiliate of the Mt Sinai School of Medicine and I was admitted to the faculty in 1983. I’ve had an interesting career. I held the title of Director of Mental Health Consultation Services at the VA, and I taught Consultation Psychiatry to medical students and psychiatric residents from 1983-90. I lectured to social work interns on many areas of psychotherapy.

I’ve been blessed with great teachers. I studied Gestalt therapy with Laura Perls, and Rational Emotive Therapy with Albert Ellis, and my teachers at the Bronx VA Medical Center were “neurobehaviorists” and I have been a student of the brain and of cognitive behavioral therapy for over 20 years. (Actually in order to practice EMDR competently one must study “CBT” because there are many important parts of EMDR that are cognitive behavioral). I completed training at the Manhattan Institute for Psychoanalysis in 1987. On completing analytic training I decided that my path led me to full time private practice, and have been doing so since that time. I did advanced training with respected members of the clinical social work society in Nassau County; Carl Bagnini LCSW in family therapy, and Bill Ballen LCSW in Ericksonian Hypnotherapy. I consider myself a lifelong student of what works best with which clinical populations.

My life was forever changed in 1991 when fellow society member Uri Bergmann Ph.D, LCSW gave me two papers to read by a psychologist named Francine Shapiro Ph.D. That same night a stock broker I had been treating analytically came in to session traumatized from witnessing a man jump to his death in front of a subway train. She told me that the thought of closing her eyes at bedtime terrified her, as she could not get the image or the traumatic sensations out of her mind and body. Knowing nothing more than what I had read in these two papers that afternoon I followed the procedure for detraumatizing someone. I got lucky on two counts. First I had no idea of what could have come up, and second she left my office greatly relieved after 90 minutes of “EMDR” (I have come to realize that this is a complex methodology and not just a ” technique” to release pain). I began formal training in 1993; I became an EMDR teacher in 1995, and have been an EMDR trainer since 2000. I am an Approved Consultant in EMDR and consult with many EMDR consultees.

I have been teaching EMDR for 10 years and lecture and give workshops internationally. Two years ago I trained 9 clinicians in a University model through the Society at the Long Island Jewish Medical Center.

This is a time in my career for me to give back to social workers what I have learned. It’s the concept of “paying forward.” I believe that as we mature in our profession we have an obligation to “pass the torch”, though I still maintain and will continue to maintain a full time practice in East Meadow.

I have recently completed my first book, EMDR and the Relational Imperative; The Therapeutic Relationship in EMDR. This is an area that has not been written about. Thanks to my Interpersonal Psychoanalytic training I realized early on that the way EMDR has been traditionally taught has left out relational aspects. Dr. Shapiro assumed that anyone who is a licensed mental health professional would know about this already. There are still many clinicians who view EMDR as a “technology” with little need to focus on relational issues. My chief argument is that there can be no dance without the dancers. And that changes how EMDR is practiced in everyday life. I give many case illustrations from the analytic, the relational and the neurobiological literature to make these points. I then suggest strategies for clinicians of restoring the state of “Mental State Resonance” both when either client or clinician, or both, go “off the tracks.

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