Thank you for visiting. I hope I can help you.
My name is Charles M. Iker, LCSW, BCD, ACSW and I have thirty-five years of extensive education and experience in psychotherapy.
My original graduate training was at Syracuse University - Falk School of Social Work in the program focused on child and family studies.
Being a therapist is an ongoing process where one embraces being a lifelong learner. To continue to grow and to learn as a therapist allows one to become more effective, more pointed, and more incisive in his work.
During my many years of professional practice, I became interested in clinical hypnosis and underwent training with the American Society for Clinical Hypnosis (ASCH). This led to advanced master class training in New York City with the renowned Jeffrey K. Zeig, PhD. I also studied Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) and continue to study this, while pursuing advanced training working with dissociation as a function of trauma. The training in hypnosis and EMDR led to my intensive training with The Trauma Center, a program established and run by Bessel Van Der Kolk, M.D.
Intensive Short-term Dynamic Psychotherapy (ISTDP) has taken a central role in the way I frame cases, and in the way I work with people. I continue to apply my other training, but it has become more ancillary to the ISTDP method. When there is a specific trauma that I identify, I will use EMDR trauma training to treat it. However, even then, I integrate ISTDP concepts, to identify where, for example, the anxiety primarily shows up and the type of defenses used.
My professional background and experience began after graduate school, when I ran a childcare facility for adolescent females in Albany, New York, and then moved on, to work at the Mt. Hope Family Center University of Rochester, which at the time, was known for its attachment and resiliency research. I ran a residential treatment facility for adolescent boys at Hillside Children’s Center. During my time at Hillside, I also worked at the now-defunct Genesee Hospital in the M.E.N.S domestic violence program. This led to a position in the children’s program at the hospital, and briefly with the drug alcohol treatment program.
Later, I moved fulltime into my private practice, CMI Psychotherapy.
