Alexander Stein, Ph.D.

Alexander Stein, Ph.D., business psychoanalyst, advises CEOs, entrepreneurs, and other business leaders on the psychological underpinnings of leadership, corporate culture, and organizational governance.

He provides practical insight into work matters whose solutions can't be found in any business plans, and on-the-ground strategies to profitably harness the complexity of motivation and behavior. He specializes in helping executives and their companies with expansion, succession, leadership, boardroom and senior team dynamics, conflict resolution, hiring assessments, partnerships, and innovative development initiatives.

Drawing on his extensive clinical expertise, Dr. Stein’s approach pivots on knowing that the best business decisions and solutions are built on sound understanding, not just expedient action, and that leaders who are psychologically in tune—resilient, agile, aware—have an unmatchable competitive advantage.

Dr. Stein consults to business leaders in a broad array of industries and sectors, including considerable experience advising the directors and boards of philanthropies, private trusts, and other substantially capitalized non-profit organizations.

He is also active as a specialist advisor to multi-national legal counsel, law enforcement, and institutional victims in high-value economic fraud and asset recovery operations, and is an internationally recognized author and speaker on the psychology of serious fraud. He will contribute the chapter on the Psychology of Fraud for the prestigious Asset Tracing and Recovery—FraudNet World Compendium, forthcoming in 2011; his expert commentary has been featured in “Asset Recovery Watch,” and presented to the International Association for Asset Recovery, and FraudNet, which operates under the Commercial Crime Services Unit of The International Chamber of Commerce (ICC-CCS).

A former columnist for FORTUNE Small Business magazine, his monthly contribution “Business in Mind” began in 2007, continuing with “The Emotional Edge” until FSB ceased publication in January 2010. His feature article, “Make Fear Your Friend,” was the December 2008 FSB cover story. An archive of his writings for FSB is accessible at CNN Money Small Business. Dr. Stein now blogs for BNET, the CBS business news network, at BNET.

In addition to executive consulting, thought leadership, and business journalism, Dr. Stein is a multi-media social entrepreneur and specialist commentator, regularly providing psychological insight into current political, economic, cultural, and social issues in The New York Times and other print, radio, online, and broadcast media. An engaging public speaker adept at rendering complicated ideas clearly and compellingly for any audience, he is a frequent guest on business talk radio shows, and is sought-after to present to boards of directors, senior management teams, and at executive retreats, business conferences, and symposia around the world.

A widely regarded psychoanalytic scholar, writer, and teacher, his award-winning articles, essays, and book reviews have been published in many of the preeminent peer-review journals. Dr. Stein is also a conservatory-trained pianist; extending his expertise away from the keyboard, he is a leading authority on the conjoined study of music and psychoanalysis. His many scholarly publications include “Music, Mourning and Consolation,” “Music and Trauma in Polanski’s The Pianist,” “The Sound of Memory: Music and Acoustic Origins,” and the Music and Psychoanalysis chapter in the “American Psychiatric Textbook of Psychoanalysis, 2nd Ed.” Recent invited lectures include the Aaron Esman/Richardson History of Psychiatry Research Seminar Lecture at Weill Cornell Medical College, the Philoctetes Center, The New Center for Psychoanalysis Los Angeles, and The Library of Congress.

He holds a Master of Social Science degree in Psychoanalytic Studies, a doctorate in Psychoanalysis, and is a graduate and member of The National Psychological Association for Psychoanalysis in New York. Among many other professional affiliations, he is active on the American Psychoanalytic Association’s Committee for Public Information.

Dr. Stein is based in New York, where he lives with his wife and two sons.