Judith L. Alpert

My focus is on trauma and on Psychoanalysis and Psychology of Gender. How is it possible for memories of trauma that have been forgotten for a long time to be remembered decades after the trauma occurred? Why do children try hard to forget trauma while adults try hard to remember trauma? I study trauma, such as war, terrorism, school violence, child sexual abuse and child abuse. I am interested in such questions as how trauma impacts the survivor and the survivor's family, why the perpetrator initiates trauma, why witnesses are slow to identify it, and how memory for trauma changes over time. I focus on these questions in my clinical and research work from a psychoanalytic as well as a social systems perspective and with a view toward treatment as well as prevention. More recently, I have also become interested in the inter-generational transmission of trauma.

How can feminist psychology and psychoanalysis co-exist? What would psychoanalysis be like if Freud had been a woman? How can you change the practice of a profession? How can psychoanalysis contribute to solving world problems? Questions such as these also interest me.