Beginnings

About esther.perel

Esther Perel is a licensed marriage and family therapist. An acknowledged authority for nearly 25 years on wartime, post-war, and refugee families; cultural identity; cross-cultural relations; and ethnic and religious intermarriage, her clinical teaching and interests center on culture and sexuality with a focus on couples. Perel is fluent in eight languages and her private psychotherapy practice in New York City serves multilingual clients. Her expertise has been sought after by victims of conflict as well as by therapists and crisis counselors in training. She has led private and public interventions around the world, and also coaches, consults, and trains organizations and lay and professional audiences.

 

Perel's innovative strategies and models for leadership have won her an international clientele of nonprofit organizations, foundations, schools, community groups, and corporations, including: New York University Medical Center; Hebrew University in Jerusalem; Psychosocial Centre for Refugees at the University of Oslo, Norway; the Soros Foundation's Open Society Institute; the Wexner Foundation; the 92nd Street Y; the Skirball Center; and United Jewish Communities. A frequent keynote speaker, she regularly addresses therapeutic and lay communities at conferences, cross-cultural forums, and workshops. In New York City, Perel hosts the Downtown Salon, a capacity crowd forum on zeitgeist issues that grew out of the Ideas Cafe she launched at the Skirball Center in 2003.

Born and raised in Belgium, Perel holds degrees from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Lesley College. She was trained and supervised in family therapy by Dr. Salvador Minuchin and serves on the faculties of the department of psychiatry, New York University Medical School, and Columbia University's International Trauma Studies Program, Mailman School of Public Health.

As a media commentator, Perel has been a guest on popular radio shows, such as The Brian Lehrer Show, and has been interviewed in leading publications, such as the Washington Post, Tikkun, New York Magazine, the New Yorker, the Atlantic Monthly, Vogue, Self, and Working Woman. She has also appeared on television programs including the Oprah Winfrey Show, the Today Show, Good Day New York, and Women Aloud.

Perel has written numerous articles and chapters about intermarriage, the families of Holocaust survivors, cross-cultural couples, and cultural and religious identity. Her 2002 essay, "Erotic Intelligence: Reconciling Sensuality and Domesticity," was featured on the front cover of the Utne Reader and was included in the anthology, Best Erotic Writings 2004. She is the author of Mating in Captivity: Reconciling the Erotic and the Domestic, which Ladies Home Journal calls a "a sweet relief" and the New York Family Review says is an "oasis of insight and inspiration."