The American Psychoanalyst

APsaA’s Excellent New Fellows for 2019-2020

The American Psychoanalytic Association Fellowship Program is designed to offer additional knowledge of psychoanalysis to outstanding early-career mental health professionals and academics, the future leaders and educators in their fields. The 13 individuals who are selected as fellows each year have their expenses paid to attend the national meetings of the American Psychoanalytic Association during the fellowship year and to participate in other educational activities. The biographies below introduce this year’s excellent group of 13 fellows. We enthusiastically welcome them to APsaA.

Vera Bekes, Ph.D., is assistant professor of clinical psychology at Ferkauf Graduate School of Psychology. She studied clinical psychology and philosophy at Eötvös Lóránd University in Budapest and received her clinical psychologist training, as well as her Ph.D., in the Psychoanalysis Doctoral Program at University of Pécs, Hungary. Bekes completed postdoctoral research fellowships at McGill University and University du Québec á Montréal. Her current research focuses on the empirical study of psychodynamic concepts in various psychopathologies and in the therapy process. She is especially interested in PTSD treatment and recovery and resilience after trauma.

Flavia DeSouza, M.D., M.H.S., received her degrees from the Yale University School of Medicine. She is a Post-Graduate Year–4 resident in the Yale Psychiatry Residency Program. Before medical school she worked for six years, first as a paralegal and then as a community organizer, galvanizing communities around various social justice issues. Currently, two key areas of focus that embody DeSouza’s passion to the field of mental health include: 1) working with historically disadvantaged communities and learners both locally and abroad and 2) conducting global health research to improve academic and clinical acumen. She has combined these interests in various clinical settings and on unique projects internationally over the last seven years. During her PGY-4 year she will complete a public psychiatry fellowship serving in the capacity as co-director of the Social Justice and Health Equity Curriculum (SJHEC). She is also one of the trainee organizers of the national Rebellious Psychiatry Conference and the resident leader of the global mental health interest group at Yale University School of Medicine. Her interests include global mental health, medical education, writing, spirituality, and using insight oriented psychotherapy to understand intersectional identities.

Francesca Engel, M.D., is a fourth-year psychiatry resident at the University of Pennsylvania. She received her M.D. from the University of Pittsburgh, School of Medicine and is a board-certified internist. Prior to psychiatric training, she was the women’s health medical director at the Crescenz VA in Philadelphia and the associate chief of primary care. In caring for veterans, she developed her clinical interests in women’s mental health and psychosomatics. As an administrator she came to appreciate the phenomenology of physician burnout and is interested in learning how psychoanalysis can help physicians conceptualize professional identity and mitigate risk factors. Engel’s professional interests also include group psychotherapy and how analytic training can inform management approaches in organizations.

Jennifer Guo, M.D., Ph.D., completed psychiatry residency at the University of California, San Francisco, where she serves as a volunteer clinical faculty member. She earned her B.A. and M.S. in neuroscience at Johns Hopkins University and her M.D. and Ph.D. in neuroscience from the Yale School of Medicine. Her thesis involved the neural substrates of impaired consciousness during petit mal seizures. While completing her adult psychiatry residency at University of California, San Francisco, she served as chief resident of the adult inpatient program. She completed the psychoanalytic psychotherapy training program at the San Francisco Center for Psychoanalysis. Her professional interests include education, interventional psychiatry, and integration of neurobiological and psychoanalytic theories of creativity and consciousness.

Rachel Hammer, M.D., M.F.A., is chief resident in the Tulane University Combined-Residency Program in Medicine and Psychiatry. She received her M.D. from the Mayo Clinic College of Medicine and has a master’s degree in fine arts in creative nonfiction. Before medical school, Hammer taught public high school in New Orleans. She recently completed an RCT examining the potential of bedside diaries to mitigate ICU-related psychological morbidity. Her professional interests include narrative medicine, teaching, psychodynamic psychopharmacology, consultant-liaison psychiatry, integration of medicine and psychiatry in both outpatient and inpatient settings, and creative writing for trauma.

Ilana Larkin, M.A., is an advanced Ph.D. candidate in English literature at Northwestern University. She works on nineteenth-century American children’s literature and childhood. Her other research interests include psychoanalytic applications to literature, medical humanities, and nineteenth-century women’s writing. Larkin earned an M.A. in English and American literature from New York University and a B.A. from Bryn Mawr College. She has completed fellowships at the Psychoanalytic Center of Philadelphia and the American Antiquarian Society and has published an article in American Imago.

Taber Lightbourne, M.D., M.H.S., is in her third year of the adult psychiatry residency at Columbia University, where she conducts research in a neuroimaging lab that studies the neurobiological underpinnings of affective disorders and suicidality. Lightbourne is a native New Yorker and was on the pre-professional track at Dance Theater of Harlem before studying history and Italian at Middle-bury College. She then completed a post-baccalaureate pre-medical program at CUNY-Hunter College and worked as a clinical research assistant at Memorial Sloan Kettering during her gap years before medical school. She matriculated at Yale School of Medicine, where she received a NIH fellowship for translational research to work for a year in the laboratory of Amy Arnsten, studying neural circuits underlying working memory. At Yale, Lightbourne helped run a 12-week enrichment program for local high school students from disadvantaged backgrounds.

Travis J. Tanner, Ph.D., M.S.W. candidate, is a professor of practice at Tulane University where he teaches classes in writing. As a teacher, he is interested in exploring the classroom as a space for emotional transformation for himself and his students. As a researcher, he writes about how literature and visual culture are used by survivors of trauma to repair psychic injuries caused by social injustices. He is completing a manuscript, “X-Communicated Subjects in Native American Literature,” that looks at these themes in the works of indigenous authors, artists, and political activists from the early 20th century to the present. He has previously published on the works of Acoma poet Simon Ortiz and the Maori author Patricia Grace. Tanner is completing his M.S.W. degree at Tulane University. Upon completion of his degree, he will begin his analytic training at the New Orleans-Birmingham Psychoanalytic Center.

Joshua Turchan, Ph.D., is a psychologist, assistant director of research, and training director at Michigan State University’s Counseling and Psychiatric Services. He is co-director of the Interpersonal Problems Clinic, a relational psychodynamic psychotherapy training clinic in MSU’s Department of Psychology. Turchan holds a master’s degree in clinical psychology from the University of Detroit Mercy and a Ph.D. in counseling psychology from Auburn University. He is a member of several professional organizations including the Society for the Advancement of Psychotherapy (Div. 29) and the Society for Psychoanalysis and Psychoanalytic Psychology (Div. 39), where he serves as part of its early career psychologist committee. Turchan’s interests include psychoanalytic theory, psychodynamic treatment and training, personality pathology and assessment, interpersonal processes in the psychotherapy relationship, and multiculturalism and social justice.

Mary Vance, M.D., M.Sc., is assistant professor of psychiatry and scientist, Center for the Study of Traumatic Stress, at the Uniformed Services University. She completed her M.D. at the State University of New York Downstate College of Medicine, her residency at the MGH McLean Adult Psychiatry Residency Program, and her health services research fellowship with the National Clinician Scholars Program at the University of Michigan/VA Ann Arbor. Her professional interests focus broadly on improving mental health care services and delivery for trauma and stressor related disorders, particularly in the military/veteran and health care professional populations.

S. Dina Wang-Kraus, M.D., is a chief resident in adult psychiatry at Stanford University. She earned her B.A. from Johns Hopkins University studying cellular/molecular neuroscience and publishing in the field of neuro-oncology. Wang-Kraus obtained her M.D. at Stanford University, School of Medicine, during which time she was awarded a year-long grant to study acculturative family distancing and help-seeking behaviors in youth suicidology in partnership with the CDC. In residency she has numerous scholarly concentrations in cultural psychiatry, medical education, physician wellness, and postpartum depression. She leads several group therapies for women in sciences and postpartum depression to address stigma. Her areas of interest include narrative-based therapy in end-of-life care and providing psychotherapy to underserved and immigrant communities.

Mary Wise, M.S.W., L.C.S.W., A.B.D., is a post-resident in the Ph.D. program at Smith College School for Social Work. She received her M.S.W. from UNC-Chapel Hill and her B.A. from Davidson College. She practices as a therapist, consultant, and trainer at the Center for Child & Family Health in Durham, NC, and has also been a part of Zero to Three’s training faculty for the DC: 0-5. Much of her practice has been with children and families healing from violence. Her current research focuses on the impact and treatment of trauma and loss in early childhood as well as the role of clinician bias on diagnostic and treatment disparities. She is committed to community mental health and the implementation of practices and policies that support clinicians practicing within it.

Tareq Yaqub, M.D., is a fellow in child and adolescent psychiatry at the University of Michigan. He earned his B.A. in history from the University of Michigan and his M.D. from Michigan State University’s College of Human Medicine, where he led the Refugee Health Elective. He completed his adult psychiatry residency at the Medical College of Wisconsin, where he was awarded the Resident/Fellow Outstanding Teaching Award. He has been active in both the Michigan and Wisconsin Psychoanalytic Institutes, presenting material during the Early Admissions Seminar and for the monthly “Clinical Moments” series. He is a 2019 recipient of the Austen Riggs Excellence in Psychotherapy Award. His professional interests include psychoanalytic praxis at the group level, psychoanalytic conceptualizations of the body, and the integration of neuroscience and psychoanalytic theory.