| ABOUT DR. WARSHAK |
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RICHARD A. WARSHAK, PH.D.CURRICULUM VITAE - SUMMARY |
Dr. Richard A. Warshak is a clinical, consulting, and research psychologist in private practice in Dallas, Texas with more than thirty years experience. He grew up in Brooklyn, N.Y., graduated from Midwood High School, and earned his undergraduate degree from Cornell University. He received his Ph.D. in 1978 from U.T.’s Southwestern Medical Center where is now a Clinical Professor of Psychology. Dr. Warshak is past president of the Dallas Society for Psychoanalytic Psychology and he sits on the Editorial Board of three professional journals.
In 1977 Dr. Warshak began a career-long project of examining prevailing and proposed child custody assumptions, presumptions, and practices in the light of logic and scientific data. At a time when few fathers were awarded child custody, Dr. Warshak collaborated with Professor John Santrock (author of more than 75 textbooks) to conduct landmark studies comparing mother-custody and father-custody families. These studies established Dr. Warshak as the leading expert on father-custody. Because he was an early advocate of greater father involvement with children than was common in the late 70s, in some circles he was mistakenly branded a fathers’ rights advocate. His subsequent work assisting divorced mothers and highlighting the dangers of joint custody with abusive fathers has corrected this misperception and reviewers of his work have praised his balanced treatment of the concerns of mothers and fathers.
In 1981, three years after earning his doctorate, Dr. Warshak became the Co-Principal Investigator of the National Institute of Mental Health Stepfamily Project. The studies that emerged from this project led to several professional publications including an article in the prestigious, peer-review journal, Child Development. Dr. Warshak’s studies and publications are cited often in the social science literature and in courtrooms and legislatures throughout the world.
Dr. Warshak consulted at the White House on custody reform and, in addition to his professional publications, he wrote The Custody Revolution (1992, Simon & Schuster; 1995 Czech translation) for the general public. This book offers practical advice to parents and professionals dealing with custody decisions and recommended fundamental reforms in custody practices that have since been widely adopted and are now considered mainstream.
Following his work on stepfamilies, Dr. Warshak tackled the issues of joint custody and the primary parent presumption. In the late 1990s he read what he thought was a skewed presentation of divorce research that had been submitted to the California Supreme Court as an amicus brief on the impact of relocation. In response he wrote an article offering a more balanced view of the subject and the Family Law Quarterly published it. Three years later the California Supreme Court again took on a relocation case and Dr. Warshak authored an amicus brief for this case that was endorsed by leading divorce experts throughout the country. Known as the Warshak Brief, it is credited with influencing the nearly unanimous landmark ruling by the Supreme Court of California. It was the subject of a front page story in the main section of the Sunday New York Times, a segment on National Public Radio, and numerous newspaper articles.
When prevailing practices restricted young children’s overnight contacts to one home, Dr. Warshak wrote Blanket Restrictions which exposed the lack of scientific foundation for the common practice. That article is frequently cited in the professional literature and has helped reform parenting plans for young children.
Dr. Warshak is generally considered one of the world’s leading authorities on pathological alienation in children. His book, Divorce Poison: Protecting the Parent-Child Bond From a Vindictive Ex (2002; also available in Czech, Korean, and Croatian editions), is the best-selling book on the topic and is considered a classic resource for parents in conflict and the professionals who help them. One of Dr. Warshak's articles on this topic, published in a German law journal, was cited in the standard commentary to the German Civil Code as an authoritative source on cases where a child rejects a parent.
Several of Dr. Warshak’s articles, and one book chapter, have been published by the American Bar Association. In 1998 Dr. Warshak was appointed to the State Bar of Texas Family Law Council’s Committee on Expert Witnesses. In that capacity, he was invited to contribute chapters on Parental Alienation Syndrome and on Relocation to the Expert Witness Manual, a guide for attorneys and judges in dealing with mental health expert contributions to family law litigation.
Dr. Warshak’s project of shining the light of social science on custody assumptions has covered father-custody, joint custody, relocation, overnights, the primary parent presumption, children’s role in custody disputes, alienation, and the “approximation rule” presumption recently proposed by the American Law Institute. In 2007 three articles by Dr. Warshak on the approximation rule were published in peer-review journals: one appeared in the interdisciplinary journal, Family Court Review, and two appeared in Child Development Perspectives, a journal published by the prestigious Society for Research in Child Development.
In addition to his research and writing, Dr. Warshak maintains an office practice evaluating and treating children, adults, and families. He consults with attorneys, mental health professionals, and parents in the U.S. and abroad.
Dr. Warshak’s Parent Questionnaire is used by mental health professionals to help better understand the problems of the children they treat. It is a valuable tool for custody evaluators, attorneys, and mediators to help better understand children who are the subjects of litigation. It is now available for online administration with a narrative report sent immediately to the professional.
Dr. Warshak believes in bringing psychological knowledge to the general public and was a regular guest on the television program, Fox4 Good Day Dallas, where he discussed a wide range of topics in psychology. He is frequently contacted by the media for his expertise on divorce. In June 2008, Maclean's magazine interviewed Dr. Warshak regarding his work with alienated children. He appears in a PBS documentary and has been on NBC Today, NBC Weekend Today, CBS Early Show, CourtTV, CNN, the ABC Home Show, CTV, and National Public Radio. His work has been discussed in front page stories in The Sunday New York Times, Washington Post, and USA Today, and in Time magazine, Parade, Psychology Today, Parents, The London Sunday Telegraph, The Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, Boston Herald, Boston Sunday Globe, Dallas Morning News, Redbook, Men’s Health, Parenting, Working Mother, Globe and Mail (Canada's leading national newspaper), and numerous other newspaper and magazines.