The Taconic Counseling Group

Elisha S. Fisch, Ph.D.

Biography

Elisha S. Fisch, Ph.D., a licensed psychologist, received his doctorate from Columbia University. In addition, he holds a Certificate of Specialization in Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy from New York University's Postdoctoral Program. Dr. Fisch specializes in the treatment of older adolescents, adults, and couples and in helping people cope with job loss, job stress, and back pain. He taught group counseling in the Department of Applied Human Development at Columbia University where he was on the faculty for seven years. As a Research Assistant at the Center for Policy Research, he conducted research on communication in marriage. He was a Staff Psychologist and Supervisor of Psychotherapists at the Fifth Avenue Center for Counseling and Psychotherapy. Prior to that, he was associated with the Columbia University Counseling Service. He was trained in Couples and Family Therapy at the Nathan W. Ackerman Family Therapy Institute in New York City.

In recent years, Dr. Fisch has received training in the use of hypnosis for stress and pain management, and as an integral part of general psychotherapy, as well as EMDR certification. Additionally, he has served as a management consultant to organizations and businesses. He has done research on factors affecting personal satisfaction. Dr. Fisch is a member of the American Psychological Association, the New York State Psychological Association, the Hudson Valley Psychological Association, and the Society for the Exploration of Psychotherapy Integration.

Dr. Fisch has his psychotherapy practice in Mount Kisco and continues to meet with people from Dutchess County and beyond, as well as via TeleHealth.

Current Interests

I am fascinated by the necessary tension between the individual's need to assert herself or himself as separate and unique, and the individual's equally strong need to be connected to others in love relationships, families, and the larger society. Society's messages about the recommended balance of these two needs, changes from generation to generation. For each of us, finding the balance of these two needs that is right for us, is one of the trickier tasks of life. In my work, I have principally focused on the way the tension between these two needs plays out in marriage and family. How much should one devote oneself to the collective needs of the marriage and the family, and how much should one devote oneself to personal growth, satisfaction, and achievement, are questions that reverberate through most families today.

The generations coming of age after W.W.II, perhaps more than most, are generations in transition, having to adapt to societal norms and socially cultivated expectations that are, in many ways, different from the norms and expectations that prevailed in their families and the surrounding society during their growing up years. This often causes dislocation and confusion. Sorting these norm and expectational shifts, and working out balances that satisfy both ourselves and the people we share our lives with, is important and challenging. I feel privileged when a couple or family allows me to participate in their effort to do this.

I am also interested in the way our evolutionary inheritance plays both positive and negative roles in the shaping of patterns of interaction in relationships. Here we find the tension generated when a psycho-biological system designed for life on the African Savannah 35,000 years ago, finds itself living in the emotionally fast paced, yet sedentary, highly developed, and interdependent civilization of Metropolitan New York. Quite a shift. The behaviors driven by the impulses of the Savannah often clash with the behaviors needed for the kind of intimate and trusting relationships we have come to want. I am greatly interested in helping people find their way to relationships based on modern expectations given our common evolutionary heritage.

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