Paul L. Wachtel is Distinguished Professor of Psychology in the Ph.D. program in clinical psychology at the City College of New York. He earned his undergraduate degree at Columbia University and his doctorate in clinical psychology at Yale University.
He is widely recognized for his contributions to psychotherapy integration, psychoanalysis, and personality theory. His 1977 book, Psychoanalysis and Behavior Therapy: Toward an Integration, challenged traditional divisions among psychotherapy schools and helped initiate a movement toward integrative approaches.
Wachtel was a co-founder and past president of the Society for the Exploration of Psychotherapy Integration (SEPI). He has lectured internationally and received numerous awards including the 2010 Hans H. Strupp Award for Psychoanalytic Writing, Teaching, and Research; the 2012 Distinguished Psychologist Award from APA Division 29 (Psychotherapy); the 2013 Scholarship and Research Award from APA Division 39 (Psychoanalysis); and the inaugural Sidney J. Blatt Award for Outstanding Contributions to Psychotherapy in 2018.
Wachtel is best known for his theory of cyclical psychodynamics, emphasizing the powerful role of vicious circles in the lives of people and societies. This approach aims to illuminate how the way we see and experience the world leads us to act in ways that are likely to evoke responses from others that perpetuate that very way of seeing and experiencing the world.
His work also explores the psychological effects of materialism and affluence on individual well-being and social cohesion, as well as race relations in America.