About

Marcia Miller has been a psychotherapist for more than 45 years, working with individuals and offering workshops in New York, Boston, San Francisco, Washington D.C., Rhode Island, Greece, and the Middle East. She completed her post-graduate training at the Gestalt Center for Psychotherapy and Training from 1976-1980, and trained with Patti Schmidt, who is one of the pioneers in Dance therapy at the Turtle Bay Music School in the early 70s. While at UC Berkeley in the late 60s, she worked with a Marine County Artist named Dale Diamond who used gestalt techniques to activate the imagination. From the very beginning, Marcia took a unique view of therapy, soon realizing that it was impossible not to encounter some kind of trauma in her clients' lives. She has worked with diverse groups of all ages, using multi-creative modalities. Some of the workshops she developed in the very early 80s were Beyond Surviving and Living Beyond Surviving, in which her deep understanding of the creative process was the backdrop. As expressed by a colleague of hers, “Marcia was pioneering in the treatment of trauma long before it became the foreground phenomenon it has in contemporary psychotherapeutic and psychiatric thought and practice.”

Some of Marcia's accomplishments are as follows:

• While Marcia was working at Lifeline Center for Child Development, a school for special needs children, she used art projects and storytelling to help them express themselves. Some of the children there were classically Autistic. Marcia became interested in Autism, and wrote a research paper on the neurological implication of Autism, made a film on Autism, and had a photography show called Childhood Eclipsed at Queens College and the Mamaroneck Gallery in Long Island.
• Early in her career, Marcia developed and implemented a Creative Arts therapy program for geriatric institutions, consisting of art, dance, drama, music, along with recreation therapy. She created courses and taught at the Jewish Home and Hospital for the Aged: "A Gestalt Approach to Aging: Understanding the Hierarchy of Needs," and "An Experiential Approach for Aging," and "How to Implement a Creative Therapy Program." in an institution. She also supervised many interns from various graduate programs in art, music, dance, and drama therapy.
• In 1987 at the World Congress of Mental Health, Marcia worked with Dr. Harron Rasid Chaudry to help professionals of the Middle East understand the profound effect of rape for the victim in hopes that this would help change some of the inhumane treatment of these victims, men and woman alike. She was a founding member of the newly-formed Women’s Caucus at the World Congress of Mental Health of 1988, which led to a deep discussion on the castration of women.
• Marcia presented “The Use of Projective Techniques with Multiple Personalities” at the National Convention of Social Work in Boston with Dr. Joel Walker of Toronto.
• During 9/11, Marcia was called in by Smith Barney, Citibank, and AIG to lead trauma counseling.

Marcia continues her work in trauma, as it is a journey that continues to unfold... most recently in how trauma, dreaming, the soul, and past memories or past lives have something to tell us.