Sabrina Cherry, MD

In her clinical practice of general psychiatry, Dr. Cherry specializes in psychodynamic psychotherapy and clinical psychoanalysis. She includes psychopharmacologic interventions when indicated, integrating these modalities to approach anxiety, depression, and, more generally, assisting adults to face life’s challenges, whether that be meeting one’s expectations for developmental milestones, managing reactions to external events such as loss and trauma, as well as understanding one’s own individual psychology and how it impacts their relationships and quality of life. A training and supervising analyst, she has expertise in treating other clinicians who seek a treatment to enhance their work with their own patients.

As a faculty member in Columbia University’s Department of Psychiatry since completing her residency at Columbia University/NYSPI she is well known as an educator, researcher and leader in innovating psychoanalytic training. As an educator, she has taught and supervised in both the Columbia residency and the Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research (Center). She has a longstanding interest in teaching therapy technique to trainees and has been a clinical supervisor for over 25 years, first in Interpersonal Psychotherapy and later in psychodynamic psychotherapy and psychoanalysis. For over a decade, she worked closely with the Columbia residency leadership on developing an innovative educational approach to teaching psychodynamic psychotherapy and co-authored two prominent textbooks used widely in the field.

Her research interest is in career development of psychoanalysts, and she is best known for an ongoing longitudinal study tracking graduates of the Center, which has been published in peer-reviewed journals and presented nationally and internationally. Her study addresses questions such as: Do graduates from psychoanalytic institutes actually practice formal psychoanalysis? What is their career path? Are they satisfied with having done analytic training and would they elect to do it again? These data have made an essential contribution to helping programs set training criteria and preparing graduates for future practice, highlighting potential directions for innovation in our field.