BIO
Dr Heitler, a clinical psychologist, specializes in treatment with couples.
In addition to her work as a therapist, Dr. Susan Heitler wears a number of related psychological hats.
- Author of 6 books, multiple audios and videos, and most recently the APA-accredited online couples therapy training course, Effective Couples Therapy.
- In-Person Workshops for therapists. Dr. Heitler has presented training workshops for therapists across the US and in Australia, the UAE, Lebanon, Israel, and China. Her workshops teach couple therapy strategies and also innovative treatment techniques for depression, anxiety, anger, and narcissism.
- Online workshops and webinars for therapists. Dr Heitler currently offers online webinars with TherapyExpress.com. These focus particularly on the research that suggests that therapists who treat a married client without at least some sessions that include the spouse may be violating the basic ethical principles of beneficence and non-maleficence, that is, they may be offering sub-optimal treatment and at the same time potentially causing harm to the spouse and/or marriage and thereby also to the client.
- Combined individual/marital therapy enables the therapist to adjust the format of each session to the problem to be addressed. At the same time, a One-Therapist rule is vital, that is, one therapist needs to conduct both the individual and the couple treatment sessions.
- Competence also is a relevant ethical principle. Too few individual therapists have received sufficient couple therapy training. To help remedy this situation, Dr. Heitler has produced the APA-accredited, self-paced, online couples therapy training course mentioned above: Effective Couples Therapy.
- Blogger Dr Heitler’s Psychologytoday.com blog has attracted over 26 million reads.
- Therapy innovator. See From Conflict to Resolution presents a conflict-resolution-based integrative therapy map and techniques for treatment effectiveness.
- Prescriptions Without Pills: For Relief From Depression, Anger, Anxiety and More offers similarly innovative understandings and treatment methods.as self-help for the general public See the website at PrescriptionsWithoutPills for free videoCreats and handouts on self-help techniques for easing depression, anger, anxiety and more.
- TEDx speaker. Dr. Heitler’s TEDx talk (above), which explains how to lift depression without taking medications, has received over 26.5 million views.
- Sports psychologist for top world-ranked team of professional doubles-tennis players.
- Educator about parental alienation via psychologytoday !8 posts on various aspects of this problem have together accumulated over 100,000 views.
- Adult Sibling Alienation. Dr. Heitler recognized and named this problematic phenomenon. Just as parental alienators turn children against a parent, an adult sibling turns other family members against one of the adult siblings, generally with an eye toward controlling the potential inheritance from an aging parent.
AWARDS
Chosen to give the keynote address at the 1st Pan-Arab Psychology Conference, Beirut, Lebanon, in October 0f 2015. The address was entitled Conflict Resolution: My Way, No MY Way. Dr. Heitler was invited to give the keynote address in Beirut, Lebanon at the 2015 1st Pan-Arab Psychology Conference.
Selected to present a TEDx talk in Wilmington, DE in 2016. The talk’s youtube.com video, which is on lifting depression, has received over 1,800,000 views.
Selected by Denver’s Metro College Department of Psychology to give the Shane Marie Morrow lecture, an annual award given to a most innovative Colorado therapist. Lecture on the psychology of terrorism entitled: Pleased to Kill You.
Fellow, APA, 2013. Fellow, APA Division 29, 2016. Dr. Heitler has been awarded Fellow status from the American Psychological Association and also from Division 29, the Society for Advancement of Psychotherapy, within the APA.
From all the marriage therapists in the US, the editors of the first master therapist video series, Assessment and Treatment of Psychological Disorders, selected Dr. Heitler to demonstrate techniques of couple treatment. Her video from this series, The Angry Couple: Conflict Focused Treatment, has become a staple in marriage therapist training programs worldwide.
The editors of the Psychologist Desk Reference selected Dr. Heitler to write the chapter on Treating High Conflict Couples.
Dr. Heitler’s 1997 book The Power of Two (New Harbinger) has been published in six foreign editions: in China, Taiwan, Israel, Turkey, Brazil and Poland.
Dr. Heitler is frequently interviewed in magazines such as Fitness, Men’s Health, Women’s World, and Parenting. Her cases appeared often in the former Ladies Home Journal column “Can This Marriage Be Saved?”
Denver TV newscasters have interviewed her for psychological perspectives on current events.
In May, 2004, on the CBS Early Show anchor Harry Smith introduced Dr. Heitler as “the most influential person in my life—my therapist.” He encouraged his viewers similarly to seek therapy when they feel distressed and to check out pre-marital counseling before they wed.
Dr. Heitler’s blogposts on psychologytoday.com have received over 26.5 million views.
A U.S. Healthy Marriages Initiative grant enabled Dr. Heitler and her associates to produce an interactive online program for teaching marriage communication and conflict resolution skills. Hundreds of couples have benefited from this fun, low-cost, high-impact program for learning the skills for a strong and loving marriage.
BOOKS
Dr. Heitler is best known in the therapy community for bringing understandings of conflict resolution to the professional literature on psychotherapy. Her book From Conflict to Resolution: Skills and Strategies for Therapy with Individuals Couples, and Families launched this process.
In addition Dr. Heitler has also written multiple self-help books for the general public. In particular, Dr. Heitler takes delight in seeing that her Power of Two and The Power of Two Workbook which together coach the skills that enable marriage success has been published in 7 foreign language editions: Polish Turkish, Chinese for Taiwan, Chinese for mainland China (simplified script), Hebrew (Israel), Spanish, and Portuguese (from Brazil).
For the full list of her books, click Books on the menu above.
BOOK CHAPTERS
For a list of Dr. Heitler’s jounral articles and pdf’s of her multiple book chapters, click Articles in the menu above.
AUDIOS AND VIDEOS
See the Videos and the Podcasts sections on this website for more of Dr. Heitler’s audio and video presentations.
WEBSITES
Goodtherapy.org Articles on individual versus couple therapy for marital problems and on conflict resolution in psychotherapy.
PsychologyToday.com Blog, Resolution, Not Conflict at http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/resolution-not-conflict. Over 26,000,000 total views. Focuses on marriage and communication skills, narcissism and bpd, managing negative emotions, energy therapy techniques, techniques of psychotherapy and parental alienation syndrome.
PrescriptionsWithoutPills.com Includes videos and handouts on managing negative emotions, building relationship skills, and sustaining well-being.
ResearchGate.net Ethical considerations in individual, couple and family therapy with married clients.
Society for the Advancement of Psychotherapy (APA Division 29): Bump Theory: A Conceptual Map for Integrative Therapists.
Times of Israel.com Opinion pieces on psychological aspects of issues concerning Israel.
WatchPsychotherapy.com shares videos of Dr. Heitler’s therapy techniques, organized by problem area (ie, relationships, depression, anxiety, etc.).
EDUCATION
Ph.D., New York University, ’75; Clinical psychology.
M.Ed., Boston University, ’68; Education of emotionally disturbed children.
B.A., Harvard University, ’67; Major in English.
FAMILY
Dr. Heitler and her husband of more than 50 years are proud parents of four happily married adult children. They now gratefully enjoy being grandparents of sixteen grandchildren.
