DENNIS L. McCAUGHAN PH.D

 

I was born in San Francisco and grew up in Honolulu. Both the city and the sea have been important influences in my life. For some 40 years I lived and worked in Chicago. I maintained an independent practice of psychotherapy and consultation as well as taught in the areas of psychotherapy and human development. My current home here on the Leelanau Peninsula in Michigan is on the Third Coast, a peninsula surrounded by water, with a big sky and open fields that stir imagination and memory.

 

After graduating from the Punahou School, I left Honolulu for the mainland in 1962 and received my undergraduate degree in journalism and English literature from Boston University. Following my graduation I served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Iran and then in the U. S. Army where I was stationed at the Pentagon. I returned to Honolulu and studied English literature at the University of Hawaii and then to California where I received a masters degree in education at Stanford University. Next, it was to the midwest and Chicago where I joined the education faculty at Roosevelt University and entered doctoral studies at the University of Chicago.

 

My interest in mental health began at the Institute for Behavioral and Psychiatric Research, a clinic devoted to the education and treatment of disturbed adolescents. At the University of Chicago, I worked as a research assistant at the Social Psychiatry Study Center in the Department of Psychiatry and then at the Laboratory for the Study of Adolescence at Michael Reese Hospital where I was a National Institutes of Mental Health Fellow in the Clinical Research Training Program and a Fellow in Adolescent Psychology at Illinois State Psychiatric Institute.

 

On receiving my doctoral degree from the University of Chicago, I held several clinical and training positions at Illinois State Psychiatric Institute. I have taught in the areas of human development, psychoanalytic theory, and psychotherapy at a number of institutions including the Chicago School of Professional Psychology and Northwestern University. I helped to found the Fellowship Program in  Advanced Psychodynamic Clinical Practice at the School of Social Service Administration at the University of Chicago and have served as a Visiting Professor at the Institute for Clinical Social Work. As a consultant, I have worked in a variety of settings including Orchard Mental Health Center in Skokie, Illinois, Deerfield High School in Deerfield, Illinois, the Neuropsychiatric Institute at the University of Illinois, Chicago and the Community House, Hinsdale, Illinois. For 15 years, I was consulting psychotherapist at Cathedral Counseling Center, Chicago where I led twice monthly supervision groups for the Center staff. My interest in education is long standing and I am a contributing editor to the journal, Schools: Studies in Education. For many years I was a member of the Educational Council at the Francis Parker School in Chicago. I am licensed as a clinical psychologist in Michigan and Illinois.

 

I am married with three children.