A Short Biography:

Dr. Christoph M. Heinicke, is an Adjunct Professor in the UCLA Division of Child Psychiatry. He coordinates the Clinical Practicum for the child psychiatry fellows, serves as their research mentor, co-directs the resident child psychotherapy clinic, and is the director of the UCLA Family Development Project. After completing his Ph.D. at Harvard University, he was given a four year Commonwealth Fund Fellowship to pursue the following: (1) child analytic training at the Anna Freud Clinic, and (2) working in John Bowlby’s Tavistock Research Unit to study systematically a two-year-old’s reaction to being separated from their mother. He applied for and was the first non-medical person to complete a full psychoanalytic adult clinical training as a research candidate. He subsequently studied the impact of frequency of session (dosage) on the process and outcome of psychotherapy with children learning below their potential. In 1987, Dr. Heinicke undertook a series of longitudinal studies to determine at what point and in what areas of functioning, a preventive relation-based therapeutic intervention is likely to impact the social-emotional development of the child and particularly the two-year-old mother-child capacity to develop what Alan Sroufe has defined as the domain of guided self-regulation. He is presently collaborating with faculty of the Olive View-UCLA Medical Center to expand the home intervention/psychiatric services of the UCLA Family Development Project so that more families can benefit from these services. Dr. Heinicke is the recipient of The Lester Hofheimer Prize for best research in psychiatry, Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences Departmental Teaching Award, Bowlby/Ainsworth Attachment Award, and Dr. Parkes Volunteer Service Award by the Westside Family Health Clinic.