A Look at the Research and Teaching Legacy of a New York Clinical Psychologist
Not every practicing psychologist also functions as a researcher and educator. Those who manage to do all three — and to do them well — occupy a rare position within the mental health profession. Michael A. Civin, Ph.D. is one such individual, having woven academic scholarship and teaching roles throughout a clinical career that now stretches across nearly three decades.
Over the course of his professional life, Dr. Civin has held a variety of academic positions at institutions of higher learning. These roles have included serving as a faculty member, an associate professor, and even as a full professor — each position reflecting the esteem with which his colleagues and academic institutions have regarded his expertise.
The scholarly output associated with these roles is considerable. Dr. Civin has had numerous articles published in peer-reviewed medical journals, contributing to the professional literature in psychology in ways that reach clinicians, researchers, and students far beyond his immediate practice. Additionally, he has contributed chapters to several significant books on psychology, ensuring that his insights are embedded in the broader educational canon of the field.
This commitment to scholarship is entirely consistent with the academic trajectory that defined his early career. He graduated cum laude from Harvard in 1968, then completed studies at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine before earning his first Master of Arts degree from the University of Oregon in 1970. A second M.A. in Clinical Psychology from the Gordon F. Derner Institute of Advanced Psychological Studies at Adelphi University followed, as did a doctoral degree from the same institution in 1988 and a Postdoctoral Certificate in Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy in 1993.
It is worth noting that this academic life has coexisted with an equally demanding clinical one. Dr. Civin co-founded Rose Hill Psychological Services in the Bronx in 2008 and continues to serve there as senior psychologist. He has also operated a private practice across Manhattan, Astoria, and Bayville since 2007, with particular expertise in psychodiagnostics, adult and adolescent psychology, group psychology, and supervision.
What Dr. Civin’s career illustrates, perhaps above all, is that the division between practice and scholarship is a false one — that the best clinicians are strengthened by research, and the best researchers are grounded by clinical reality.
For those looking to understand what a genuinely comprehensive psychology career looks like, Michael A. Civin, Ph.D. stands as a particularly instructive example.