Education
BA, English, University of California Los Angeles
MA, American Studies, California State University, Los Angeles
MA, Marriage, Family, & Child Clinical Services, United States International University
PhD, Psychology, Saybrook Graduate School
Relevant Experience
Dr. Cushman has traveled a most unusual path to the Psy.D. program at Antioch. For instance, he worked as a professional pizza deliverer and an inspector of fire extinguishers and attended five different graduate programs in five different academic fields. His first graduate school was a rabbinic seminary, but then civil rights and anti-war activism moved him in other academic directions in the late 1960s and early1970s. Dr. Cushman went on to graduate from both an American Studies and a Marriage and Family Therapy program. He worked as a MFT for several years in community and family service agencies in San Diego and the San Francisco Bay Area before beginning a private practice and then a Ph.D. program in psychology at Saybrook Institute in 1981. In that program he had the great good fortune to study under Ed Sampson, the most important critical social psychologist of the post-World War II era, and Tony Stigliano, a gifted philosopher who introduced him to hermeneutics through the works of Martin Heidegger and Hans-Georg Gadamer. In 1984 he published his first academic article ¾ “The Self Besieged” ¾ in a professional journal (Psychohistory Review), an activity so meaningful (and fun) that he continues it to this day. In 1988, Dr. Cushman was hired as an adjunct at the California School of Professional Psychology. In 1994, after two articles in American Psychologist (“Why the Self Is Empty” and “Ideology Obscured: The Political Uses of Daniel Stern’s Infant”) and various other publications, he accepted a full-time appointment at CSPP to teach among other things the history of psychology, adult psychotherapy, and hermeneutic research.
Professional Interests
Clinical Research Interests
In 1989, Dr. Cushman attended his first American Psychological Association Annual Convention. It was there that he met kindred souls in the Theoretical and Philosophical Division such as Blaine Fowers, Frank Richardson, Louis Sass, and Ken Gergen, and in the History Division such as Laurel Furumoto and Jill Morawski. They began to plan APA programs together and developed an annual hermeneutics party, which became famous for good talk and good times. By helping him develop an understanding of hermeneutics, he believes they saved his intellectual life, and he owes them much gratitude. In 1995, Dr. Cushman published Constructing the Self, Constructing American: A Cultural History of Psychotherapy, and at about that same time his wife Karen, who had started writing historical novels for young adolescents, won the Newbery Silver Metal for her first book, Catherine, Called Birdy, and then The Newbery Gold Metal (the most prestigious writers award for children’s authors in the U.S.) for her second book, The Midwife’s Apprentice. Dr. Cushman refers to this as “ heady days for the Cushman family.” It was through these many experiences that Dr. Cushman developed his theoretical orientation in hermeneutics and relational psychoanalysis. Dr. Cushman specializes in utilizing interventions that focus on the relationship between patient and social context, patient and therapist, teacher and student. He believes that humans are always in relation to one another, to society, and to the historical traditions that constitute us. We live them out, and yet we must also critique them.
Professional Interests
Dr. Cushman now lives on Vashon Island in Puget Sound where he maintains a private practice and continues his historical research and writing. Dr. Cushman’s current research interests include the history of psychotherapy, social critique (especially the meanings and political consequences of social media), cultural history, and the integration of politics and psychology. Dr. Cushman is keenly involved in the dissertation process of his students, and has invited students to be part of the professional community through invitations to several intellectual and clinical events in the Northwest. Dr. Cushman is licensed as a Marriage and Family Therapist in Washington and California, and is currently writing two books about the self.
Extracurricular Interests
During his free time, Dr. Cushman in involved in the synagogue on Vashon Island, where he participates in a weekly Torah study group. He also participates in the Washington State Religious Campaign Against Torture (WSRCAT).
