Jessica Broitman PHD (she/her)(https://doctorjess.org/about/) is an author, researcher and a psychoanalyst practicing in Berkeley since 1980. Dr. Broitman was born in New York City, to Adeline and Harold Broitman. She attended the University of Colorado, Boulder, where she got her BA in 1975 in Art, Religion, and Psychology, and an MA in 1977 in Counseling Psychology. She began her career in Boulder, Colorado in 1973. As member of the Intensive Treatment Team of the Boulder Mental Health Center, she ran the Gordon Beyer project, one of the first residential treatment programs for chronic schizophrenics in the country. While in Boulder, she met her husband, A Gibor Basri,(astrogibor.org) who is currently a ProfessorEmeritus of Astronomy at UC Berkeley.
In 1980 they moved to the Bay Area, where she became the Program Coordinator for the Creative Living Center, another residential treatment program. She became a licensed Marriage, Family, and Child Counselor in 1980. Jessica then attended the Wright Institute in Berkeley, where she obtained her PhD in 1985. During this time she became involved with Joseph Weiss and Control Mastery Theory. She formalized the http://sfprg.org/m San Francisco Psychotherapy Research Group as a non-profit organization in 1993. She is President emerita of SFPRG. Dr. Broitman became a licensed Psychologist in 1987.
Jessica began study at the San Francisco Psychoanalytic Institute in 1996, and graduated in 2001. She currently has a private practice doing psychotherapy and psychoanalysis in Berkeley. She was instrumental in the initiation of SFPRG's Psychotherapy Training Center and Clinic, and served as the Executive Director for 15 years. In 2017 she helps create the International Control Mastery Therapy Center (CMTCenter) and currently serves as the President of the CMTCenter. She frequently lectures on Weiss's Control Mastery Theory worldwide.
Dr. Broitman has become an expert on non-verbal learning disabilities (NVLD), and recently co-authored 5 books on that topic for practitioners and parents. In collaboration with Dr. John (Jack) Davis, she has participated in several research projects concerning the treatment and understanding of NVLD.Their most recent collaboration was “Team collaboration for the best practice treatment of NVLD across three systems: school based, hospital based and family based” found in Barbara Reisman’s book Medical and Educational Perspectives on Nonverbal Learning Disability in Children and Young Adults (IGI 2016). She is the co-author of Nonverbal Learning Disabilities in Children: Bridging the Gap Between Science and Practice (2011) and the co-editor of Treating NVLD in Children (2013), NVLD and Developmental Visual Spatial Disorder ( 2020) Understanding Non-Verbal Learning Disability: A Guide to Symptoms, Management and Treatment (Understanding Atypical Development) (2021) Learning disabilities in children and adolescents:Through a mental health lens ( 2022), as well as numerous chapters and articles. She has worked with families who have learning-disabled children for more than 10 years. She is currently involved in several research projects concerning the treatment and understanding of NVLD and has a special interest in helping professionals and families understand and treat this disorder. She is available for consultations and can be reached at: Jess@Doctorjess.org. For more information on her work on NVLD see:https://doctorjess.org/author/
For a half-hour video on NVLD featuring the authors, please see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vymdZUuB-T4&feature=youtu.be https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vymdZUuB-T4&feature=youtu. Her curriculum vitae can be found here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1IGmYSuK35D9_v4ADc5Lyv24oeUyqFu-ubD5Q8ocANBU/edit#heading=h.l7won1k6dj3k
For a half-hour video on NVLD featuring the authors, please see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vymdZUuB-T4&feature=youtu.be https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vymdZUuB-T4&feature=youtu.
In addition Jessica is a activist who has been helping to move the mountain towards justice for decades as an organizer, administrator, and as a fundraiser. As a Board member of the I Have a Dream: Oakland foundation, Jessica took a third grade class in urban Oakland all the way through college (picking up classmates along the way). She also founded and ran a low-fee training clinic in San Francisco that served hundreds of low income individuals needing long term therapy, while concurrently training many new psychologists though SFPRG.
She currently serves as the president of the International Control Mastery Therapy Center. She was on the Advisory Board for the Division of Equity and Inclusion at UC Berkeley and deeply involved in that organization for 15years. She is the president of both the Broitman and Luna foundations. Through her family foundation she has practiced progressive philanthropy for decades, and has been involved in getting Americans to vote during the last 20 years. For the past 6 years Jessica has advised Reach Shirati which founded an award winning school in Tanzania and has been helping the village for the past 15 years, even more so during COVID. She is a board member of The Mentor Project (mentorproject.org) which serves people internationally, and “Mask the World” https://thementorproject.wixsite.com/masktheworDr
Her son, Jacob Avram Basri, was born in 1991. He is a graduate of Sarah Lawrence College (2013) and Yale University School of Drama (2023) and is now a director/actor living in New York City.
