Richard Wessler (1936-)

     Biographical Note

Richard Wessler was born 11 September 1936, St. Louis, Missouri, and is currenlty emeritus professor of psychology and former chair of the department at Pace University in Westchester, New York (1974 to 2001), and has been in private practice in New York City, since 1986.

              He received an undergraduate degree and the Ph. D. in clinical psychology at Washington University in St. Louis (1966). He was a post-doctoral fellow at the Institute for Rational-Emotive Therapy, from 1973 to 1975, and served as a supervisor and director of its training programs from 1975 until 1981. He was co-director of the Multimodal Therapy Institute in New York from 1983-1986.

              Dr. Wessler previously held faculty and administrative posts at Saint Louis University (1966-1969) and Parsons College (1969-1973), and is an alumnus of Harvard University's Institute for Educational Management (1973). He has been visiting professor in counseling and clinical psychology at Aston University in England and University of Leiden in The Netherlands (1981-1982), and has conducted professional training workshops on cognitive-behavior therapy throughout North America and Western Europe (1975 to present).

              He has written extensively on Cognitive Appraisal Therapy, the approach he originated with Sheenah Hankin. They collaborate on personality profiles of celebrities, such as the one of Howard Stern that appears in his best selling book, Private Parts. He has been frequently quoted in newspaper and magazine articles on topics ranging from relationships to parenting to popular culture..

In addition, he has authored numerous articles and three books on psychological therapy and counseling. His most recent book is Succeeding with Difficult Clients:Applications of Cognitive Appraisal Therapy, published by Academic Press. His work has been translated into Spanish, German and Dutch. He is the former editor of Rational Living, and has been an editorial board member of Psychotherapy (the journal of the division on psychotherapy of the American Psychological Association), of the Journal of Cognitive Psychotherapy: An International Quarterly, and of Psicologia Conductual (published in Spain).