Kenneth Critchfield PhD

Dr. Ken Critchfield received his doctoral degree from the University of Utah. His internship was at the San Francisco VA Medical Center, with post-doctoral training focused on treatment of personality disorders at Weill-Cornell Medical School with John Clarkin, Ph.D. and Otto Kernberg, M.D.

Dr. Critchfield is currently the program director of the Adult PsyD program at the Ferkauf Graduate School of Psychology in Yeshiva University. Prior to this position, he served as the program director of the Psy.D. in Combined Clinical & School Psychology at James Madison University. 

Before his academic appointments, Dr. Critchfield worked closely with Dr. Lorna Smith Benjamin, creator of IRT, to operationalize and test efficacy and process of change of IRT as applied with adults having severe and chronic psychiatric problems and served as the co-director of the Interpersonal Reconstructive Therapy (IRT) clinic at the University of Utah Neuropsychiatric Institute. He has published extensively about IRT and is a leading researcher in the field.

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Dr. Critchfield frequently consults on issues of methodology, design, and analysis for projects involving the interface between interpersonal measurement (especially moment-by-moment interactional process using the Structural Analysis of Social Behavior), personality, and psychopathology. He is the former Secretary of SEPI and past-chair of the Education and Training Committee of Society for Advancement of Psychotherapy (APA Div. 29). He is licensed in VA and maintains a small practice applying IRT to a wide range of clinical problems.