Alexander Stein, Ph.D.

Alexander Stein, Ph.D. is a licensed and nationally certified psychoanalyst.  He has extensive experience working with senior executives and high level professionals from a broad spectrum of industries and business sectors, and has cultivated a unique set of expertise germane to a multitude of organizational cultures, bringing fluency and agility to identifying, articulating, and addressing complex psychodynamic issues. 

Recent consultations have included boutique and mid-size financial services firms, a major league sports company, top tier arts organizations, a media conglomerate seeking to create and implement a mental health initiative, a white shoe law firm strained by the forced retirement of a senior partner, and entrepreneurs strategizing venture capital acquisition, and start-up through early phase development logistics, among others.  He also maintains a private clinical practice in which he treats adult individuals and couples.

Dr. Stein is a regular columnist for Fortune Small Business, writing the “Business in Mind” column.  “Business in Mind” is e-published monthly on the CNN/Money website, and is designed, as FSB’s editor-in-chief describes, “to tackle the emotional and psychological issues that plague owners of small companies … and to offer insight into work matters whose solutions can't be found in any business plans.”  His expert commentary on social, political, and organizational matters have also been featured in The New York Times and Fortune. 

A prolific writer, Dr. Stein’s wide-ranging interests are reflected in the scope and diversity of his multi-disciplinary essays, book chapters, and book reviews.  He is the author of numerous scholarly works that have been published in many of the leading peer-reviewed psychoanalytic journals, including The International Journal for Psychoanalysis, The Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, The Psychoanalytic Review, American Imago, The Journal for the Psychoanalysis of Culture and Society, Psychoanalytic Books, and Psychoanalytic Psychology.  He is currently writing a book titled “The Sound of Memory” elucidating the formative influences of the early sound environment on psychological development.

Drawing upon knowledge and experience from his earlier career as a conservatory trained concert pianist and international performer, he has established himself as one of the world’s leading authorities in the conjoined study of music and psychoanalysis.  The relevance of this to Dr. Stein’s work in the business world bears on, for instance, identifying and interpreting non-verbal communication, and hearing and understanding implicit meaning from subtle shifts in speech. This has particular benefit in cases involving breakdowns in family businesses, partnerships, boards of directors, executive management teams, and other closely knit groups in which childhood patterns of communication and reaction tend to surface in more primitive forms.

His 1998 essay “Well-Tempered Bagatelles: A Meditation on Listening” received the Ernest Angel Award for significant contribution to the psychoanalytic literature.  “Music, Mourning and Consolation” received the prestigious Gradiva Award in 2004 from the World Organization Public Education Corporation and the National Association for the Advancement of Psychoanalysis, and was subsequently published in a special issue of The Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association focusing on global terrorism and genocidal prejudice.

He has recently been appointed to the American Psychoanalytic Association’s Committee on Public Information, and is on the Boards of Directors of The Psychoanalytic Review, American Imago, and The Forum for Movies and Mind. He is also a member of the Association’s Committee on Psychoanalysis and the Arts, and is Co-Chair of the Music and Psychoanalysis Discussion Group.

Recently, Dr. Stein and Dr. Sulkowicz have joined forces, together with several other colleagues from the Boswell Group, to form Subtext: Psychodynamic Intelligence for Business, a subscription news and data analysis publication for corporate leaders.  Subtext is expected to launch in Spring 2008.

He is also a frequent presenter at international psychoanalytic and multi-disciplinary conferences and symposia, speaking on a wide array of topics.  Relatedly, he is a regular contributor to the European Psychoanalytic Film Festival, held every two years at BAFTA in London; and has published a number of film essays in journals and anthologies.

As a teacher, Dr. Stein has offered interdisciplinary seminars at New York University and New School University, courses in theory and clinical technique for psychoanalytic candidates in training, and has developed and presented a unique curriculum in psychoanalytic writing. 

In addition to his education and training in music performance and musicology, he holds masters and doctoral degrees in psychoanalysis, and completed training as a psychoanalyst at The National Psychological Association for Psychoanalysis where he is a training and supervising analyst and faculty member.