Faculty Spotlight: Dr. Maria Lamia
“Do the work that gives you the wisdom to ask the right questions,” advised Dr. Mary Lamia, faculty member in the Wright Institute’s Clinical Psychology Program. “Read all you can, discover what others are saying, and do not be afraid to critique it. Being informed is very important to our work.” Throughout her life, Dr. Lamia has demonstrated her steadfast determination in pursuing and sharing knowledge.
Dr. Lamia was born and raised in a rural area of West Pittsburg, California. “My father had an 8th-grade education, worked reading meters for Pacific Gas and Electric, and built our modest home,” she recalled. “My mother grew vegetables and fruit, sharing the bounty from our garden with neighbors and the post-war hobos who rode the trains.” Dr. Lamia recalls enjoying her neighborhood and feeling fortunate as a child, despite the fact that classmates made her and her brother aware of their lower socioeconomic status. Unfortunately, her mother was diagnosed with cancer when Dr. Lamia was only four years old and passed away at forty-three when Dr. Lamia was only eleven. “She would always say that she could fix anything except a broken heart - my father certainly was brokenhearted when she died,” she reflected. “Hoping to join my mother in heaven, he secretly declined necessary heart surgery and died at age 54, when I was 21.” These losses in her early life shaped Dr. Lamia in many ways and led her to the work she does today.
For her undergraduate studies, Dr. Lamia attended the University of California at Berkeley, where she began as an English literature major. “After taking a course taught by a forensic psychiatrist, Bernard Diamond, I became passionate about the field of psychology,” she explained. “I was especially interested in psychoanalysis despite the focus of my undergraduate education on behaviorism.” She changed her major and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in psychology in 1971. “The highlight of my time at Cal was living in an old 10-bedroom house with other students, primarily physics graduate students, where the rent was $40 a month,” she laughed. “One of my housemates was John Mather, who later was a Nobel prize recipient and became the senior project scientist for the James Webb Telescope.” Over the last few years, Dr. Lamia has had the opportunity to reconnect with many of these former roommates and they now meet monthly on Zoom. She described her overall undergraduate experience as “a lesson in how to survive and thrive and connect with wonderful people.”
Throughout her time at UC Berkeley, Dr. Lamia worked at an insurance office after class and on Saturdays in order to pay for her education and other expenses. “A District Manager urged me to become an insurance agent, and he took some pride in the possibility of mentoring the first female insurance agent in the company, if not in the country,” she recalled. “I came within weeks of taking the exam, but decided at the last moment that the idea was ludicrous: In 1971, who would buy insurance from a woman?” Dr. Lamia continued to work in insurance during her graduate studies, but knew it wasn’t the career path for her.
Dr. Lamia enrolled in the educational psychology master’s program at San Francisco State University in the fall of 1971. “Upon graduating from college, I was interested in working with children and adolescents, either as a teacher, counselor, or therapist,” she shared. “A master’s degree in educational psychology seemed to be a path straddling those goals.” After earning her master’s degree in 1973, Dr. Lamia began to work at a Catholic high school for boys in San Francisco, starting as a counselor and teacher and advancing to the position of Guidance Director.
While working full time, she was also pursuing her doctorate in clinical psychology from the California School of Professional Psychology. “Having an interest in psychology in the 1970’s allowed exposure to a multitude of ideas and approaches,” she reflected. “Otto Kernberg gave a presentation at my internship about object relations theory, and I learned about self-psychology, which was also a budding theoretical framework.” She focused her studies on group therapy, which she found particularly helpful with adolescents, and was involved in encounter groups, psychodrama groups, and meditation groups. “During the years in which I was a counselor, I led numerous weekly groups for adolescents and, at the same time, I became passionate about the subject of psychological education,” she explained. “My interests in group therapy and psychological education became the subject matter of my doctoral dissertation, and since then I have endeavored to extend psychological knowledge to the public.” Dr. Lamia earned her PhD in clinical psychology in 1977.
The following year, Dr. Lamia opened her private practice in San Francisco, working with adults, adolescents, couples, and families. After ten years, she moved her practice to Marin County where she still sees clients today. “Working in an affluent community has been fraught with challenges and a great deal of learning,” she admitted. “I had very erroneous assumptions about people who are affluent and I discovered that ‘poverty’ exists in many forms.” She quickly learned that not everyone in that community had the ability to pay, so she began offering reduced fees for clients who couldn’t afford treatment. “It has been interesting to live and work in a community that has one of the highest rates of alcohol and drug abuse in the country among both adolescents and adults,” she reflected. “Shame and the fear of shame are pervasive.”
After starting her private practice, Dr. Lamia wanted to pursue psychoanalytic training, but there were roadblocks in her path. “At that time, I was barred from doing so since an applicant for psychoanalytic training was required to have a medical degree or to be actively involved in research,” she explained. “I was determined, and perhaps even driven, to get the training I desired.” She found that there was a “special training” category for admissions to the San Francisco Psychoanalytic Institute that was defined as being for someone who would benefit from psychoanalytic training because of their work in a particular area. No one had ever been an applicant in that category, but by virtue of her work in numerous Catholic and Jewish schools in the area, Dr. Lamia was accepted to the institute. “I was particularly intrigued by some of the lectures and discussions by Joseph Weiss, and he became one of my supervisors for 4 years,” she recalled. “His ideas about separation guilt and survivor guilt became important to my work, and they helped me to make sense of my own childhood and adolescence.” Dr. Lamia earned her certification in psychoanalysis from the San Francisco Psychoanalytic Institute in 1995.
From 1999-2007, Dr. Lamia had the opportunity to host a show on
In 2001, Dr. Lamia joined the faculty of the Wright Institute’s Clinical Psychology Program. “I received a call asking me if I would consider teaching at the Wright Institute, and if I would come for an interview,” she recalled. “I did not think it was something I would want to do, but for some reason I pursued the possibility.” Over two decades later, it’s clear that her instincts led Dr. Lamia in the right direction. “I enjoy teaching case conferences and I especially enjoy chairing dissertations,” she shared. “I get such a thrill from learning the research on topics I had never considered!”
Dr. Lamia has published six books and many journal and newspaper articles, primarily centering around emotions and how we process them. “It baffles me that clinical psychologists are not taught in depth about affects and affect theory,” she admitted. “I am not clear about what led me to affect psychology, but once I got there, I found it to be an essential area of understanding for psychologists.” Two of Dr. Lamia’s books, Understanding Myself: A Kid’s Guide to Intense Emotions and Strong Feelings and Emotions! Making Sense of Your Feelings, obviously struck a chord with children and families and won Family Choice Awards in 2012.
Over the course of her career, Dr. Lamia has made appearances on a variety of radio programs, television shows, and podcasts. “Although I may appear to be very outgoing, I’m actually a shy person,” she admitted, “so doing hundreds of media interviews has not been so easy for me.” Despite the challenge, Dr. Lamia has enjoyed the opportunities she’s had to share her work with the public audience. “The interviews that have most stood out for me involve my recent book, Grief Isn’t Something to Get Over,” she reflected. “On a number of occasions, very seasoned interviewers have become tearful during our interview when bringing up their personal grief about a relationship.”
Since 2009, Dr. Lamia has written regular blog posts for Psychology Today. She began with a series related to her book The White Knight Syndrome from 2009-2011, then she moved on to a series on “Intense Emotions and Strong Feelings” that began in 2010 and continues to this day. “My blog posts have had over 6 million reads, which is baffling yet very gratifying,” she explained. “I enjoy writing for the public, especially to refute the psychological myths that exist, such as the idea that grief has stages or that twins should be separated.” Her only regret is that she wishes he had time to write even more blog posts.
When asked what she does outside of work, Dr. Lamia laughed and said, “Oh, gosh, I really don’t have time to have a life beyond work!” In the limited free time she has, Dr. Lamia enjoys volunteering her time working with psychology students at a university in Northern Louisiana. She has found this work very rewarding and has enjoyed getting to know the students. “Beyond that, I love to remodel not just psychic but also tangible spaces,” she added. “My late husband always teased that I would have been great at doing displays for department store windows.” Dr. Lamia also treasures the time she gets to spend with her grandson, who she described as her “favorite hobby.”
Over the years, Dr. Lamia has witnessed dramatic changes in the field of psychology. “When I began, behaviorism was prominent, which has now become CBT,” she explained. “In psychoanalytic circles, there was drive theory, which transformed into ego psychology, then self-psychology and object relations theory, control mastery theory, and many other iterations of psychodynamic psychotherapy.” She counts herself fortunate to have experienced this progression of theoretical frameworks and learned from each. Dr. Lamia has also made her own contributions to the field of psychology. “Perhaps my greatest contributions have been an alternative understanding of motivational styles (demonstrating that procrastination is a valid motivational style), the role of shame in psychopathology (especially depression, which has been mistaken as anger turned against the self), and an understanding of the grief experience as something we do not ‘get over,’” she shared modestly. Dr. Lamia’s career, marked by pioneering research, impactful teaching, and public education, reflects her unwavering commitment to understanding and addressing complex human emotions.