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Dr. Safer is an internationally recognized expert on the issues facing people whose siblings have physical or mental problems, a field she pioneered and about which she has written renowned two books. She offers consultations and individual and couple psychotherapy—including for politically mixed couples—in person and by phone, both nationally and internationally.

She is also available for speaking engagements and workshops for general and professional audiences on the “Taboo Topics” that are her specialty, as well as for radio, television and other media interviews on these and other related topics:

Difficult sibling relationships
How to disagree about politics in intimate relationships
Is motherhood for you?
Obsessive love
Must we forgive?
The positive effects of a parent’s death in adulthood

Dr. Safer’s email address is [email protected]

Facebook: facebook.com/jeannesaferphd

Twitter: @JeanneSafer

Instagram: @JeanneSafer

You may contact Dr. Safer by email at [email protected].

This is an excerpt from the writer’s application for advanced psychotherapy training, which she is now pursuing, as a direct result of our work together:

“Eight years ago, I rang her doorbell so softly that she did not hear me until my third try. She was a psychoanalyst and I was seeking her help, full of fear. What transpired that day and over the past eight years has been an experience of validation and safety, self-cohesion, and gradual freedom by knowing my history. Through my personal experience in psychotherapy and the realization of my natural ability, psychodynamic psychotherapy has become my vocation.”

This note was accompanied by a joyous photograph of the author with his young daughter and his handicapped sister:

“Dear Dr. Safer,

It’s been eight years since our sessions. I’d like to thank you for all you did for me. I made gigantic strides on account of it. Attached is a picture from my family’s first Thanksgiving with my sister (who has cerebral palsy and mental retardation) holding my eight-month-old daughter. This is a moment I’ve been hoping to have for decades and it was indeed sweet. Parenthood is all I hoped it would be and more, and for all the joys of it, this one in particular, I owe a debt to you.”

When Jeanne Safer met the historian and political journalist Richard Brookhiser, he disclosed straightaway that he wrote for National Review. Her initial reaction was, Uh-oh. “I thought of conservatives as the John Birch Society,” said Dr. Safer, a psychotherapist in New York City. “I’d heard of William F. Buckley but certainly never thought he’d be at my wedding.”

Read more of the New York Times Style Section article on Dr. Safer.

I imprisoned my husband in the bedroom of our four-room apartment for six weeks last fall. When, after spending hours writing on his computer at his sun-drenched desk, he emerged to relax and read the newspaper, I forced him back whence he came and, with some asperity, shut the door; evening was my writing time, and my computer is in the living room. He accepted his fate with remarkable forbearance.

Read more of the Washington Post Arts and Living article on Dr. Safer.

It took the hematologist only five minutes to examine the cells he had just extracted from my bone marrow and to make the diagnosis. “You have acute promyelocytic leukemia, the rarest type,” he said in a straightforward, utterly authoritative manner.

Only six in 10 million people are diagnosed annually with the disease, but it has very high survival rates. It was a dizzying combination of dreadful and miraculous luck.

Read more from Dr. Safer’s 2-Minute Memoir in Psychology Today

I’ve had only one scales-dropping-from-my-eyes revelation in my life, but the timing was perfect because it brought my mother back to me. Minutes before my final conversation with her as she lay dying, I realized that the behavior that hurt and infuriated me all my life came not from her self-involvement and insensitivity, as I had always assumed, but from the deepest love.

Read more of the O: The Oprah Magazine article by Dr. Safer.

Contact

Dr. Safer’s email address is [email protected]

Dr. Safer in the Media