Dr. Lisa Goldfarb is a psychiatrist, board-certified in both psychiatry and addiction psychiatry. She attended MIT and Columbia P&S, completed her residency at NYSPI/Columbia University, fellowship in Addiction Psychiatry at NYU. She then returned to Columbia for the Psychoanalytic Training Program.

In addition to her private practice and extensive teaching/ mentoring in the NYU residency, she served a director of the NYU House Staff Mental Health Service. Through her work with patients who struggle with addiction and complex mood disorders, she has come to understand the powerful impact of both “Big T” and “little t” traumas. Her interest in the innovative trauma treatments grew out of her reading Bessel van der Kolk’s book, The Body Keeps the Score. She wanted to understand the statements “Trauma lives in the body” and “Trauma will be Told”. The traditional psychiatric education did not address these powerful treatments.

She then trained with Laurel Parnell in “Attachment Focused EMDR”. She uses EMDR in her clinical practice and has found it to be a true “power tool” in helping her patients to move forward in their path toward healing. Dr. Goldfarb is also training in Peter Levine’s Somatic Experiencing and is now taking the advanced coursework of the 3-year training program.

She teaches in the Columbia University Trauma-Informed Psychodynamic Therapies Program and has given lectures on “The Trauma Cycle & What is EMDR?” at the 2025 AAAP meeting.