My historical background 

When I was a teenager, I had dreamt of being a psychiatrist so that I could help others. However, my country of origin, Turkey, was a relatively poor country with a highly unequal income distribution. I had decided that I could help my country by choosing a profession which would train me to help others more collectively, rather than individually. Hence, in my senior year in high school I decided to become an economist. I received a BA in economics, ranking first in my class, from the Middle East Technical University in Ankara, Turkey. 

I then came to the US on a fellowship from Stanford University, where I received a doctorate in economics in 1985. Upon my graduation, I moved to Los Angeles and became a faculty member at the UCLA Economics Department, where I am still employed as an Associate Professor of Economics. While at UCLA I went on leaves with fellowships from the National Bureau of Economics and Stanford University. I have also taught at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and at Koc University in Istanbul. In addition, I have worked as a consultant at the World Bank and at the United Nations Development Program. 

After having established myself as an economist, I decided to follow the original passion of my teenage years and started on a doctorate program in psychoanalysis at the New Center for Psychoanalysis in 2003. The New Center for Psychoanalysis is an institution with a national reputation for offering courses covering a full range of psychoanalytic theories and practices; I took theory seminars here for four years. In my first year I worked at the Los Angeles Free Clinic as an intern and started my private practice in psychotherapy in 2003. While training in the doctorate program, I had clients that were in psychoanalytic treatment in addition to psychotherapy clients. I received my doctorate in Psychology of Psychoanalysis in 2013 after having worked with 3 three different individuals in psychoanalysis at four times a week frequency for over 2-3 years each, having psychotherapy patients and completing my dissertation with the title of “Unavailable Mothering, Its Consequences, and Survivor’s Guilt” At present, I am a member of the New Center for Psychoanalysis and a teaching faculty member. 

I have been in private practice for nineteen years, beginning from when I was enrolled at the New Center for Psychoanalysis as a registered member of the California Medical Board. Even though I was a student at the time, I could practice under supervision as set forth in Section 1373 of the California Code of regulations. 

Publications 

Prior to my training in psychoanalysis, I published numerous articles in economics, including in the top academic journals.

Following the doctorate program in psychoanalysis, I started psychoanalytically examining the moral philosophy of Adam Smith. This work led me to publish numerous articles in journals, including psychoanalytic journals. In 2018 I published a book with the title of Psychoanalytic Studies of the Work of Adam Smith: Towards a Theory of Moral Development and Social Relations (Ozler and Gabrinetti, Routledge).

My current research is focused on comparing contemporary understandings of empathy in psychoanalysis and neuroscience with Adam Smith’s concept of sympathy.