Jasenn Zaejian, Ph.D.
Huntington Beach, California
Brief Professional Autobiography
Early in my studies, I learned that practicing effective psychotherapy requires many years of training and experience.
Psychotherapy is effective when people change, develop an increased awareness of themselves and their environment, and get beyond the many constrictions that impede happiness and the experience of pleasure in themselves and with others.
I had the good fortune to study with many prominent figures of the time in the psychotherapy, psychology and anthropology fields including Rollo May, Viktor Frankl, Ashley Montague, Everett Shostrom, Harold Greenwald and Herbert Blumer.
In addition to graduate school, including research on cancer and personality, I completed more than 10 years of training in formal psychotherapy programs, volunteered at a Buddhist monastary studying Buddhist thought and practice, and was trained in Gestalt Therapy, Tibetan healing and core energetic practices. For years, I volunteered with the Red Cross Disaster Mental Health services and was appointed to supervise major disaster operations, including the WTC disaster.
My career included various public service clinical, and management positions, serving individuals from multi-ethnic and multicultural communities in community mental health settings, a private psychiatric hospital, a private clinic, public psychiatric and forensic hospitals, prisons, and private practice. Though, I continue to consult and see individuals, I ended my public service career in 2007.
Forensic psychology experience includes expert witness testimony for the defense and submission of affidavits, in state and federal courts, including preparation of insanity defense, dangerousness, and competency evaluations.
I developed 3 neuropsychology labs in forensic psychiatric hospitals and a civil psychiatric hospital where I trained interns, conducted research, higher cortical function retraining, and clinical neuropsychological evaluations.
Teaching experience includes neuropsychology for hospital psychologists and clinical psychology interns, reasoning & rehabilitation programs for consumer groups, graduate psychology courses in existential psychotherapy, personality theory, clinical and counseling psychology, social and cultural diversity, and forensic psychology.
I am the author of various papers on healing and a book, Giving Up “Mental Illness” Or How To Be Normal In A ‘Crazy’ World, essentially a training/teaching manual for people, published in 1998, now out of print. I am a reviewer for the Journal of Mindfulness.
The latest attempt to deconstruct the field of "mental health" treatment and provide effective healing strategies for individuals and institutions was published in June, 2011, entitled Healing Personal Psychology, available in both
hard cover
and digital editions.
