Steven Reisner, PhD is a psychoanalyst and an activist who works publicly to combat political violence and privately to prevent suffering from becoming ill. He is a 
founding member of the Coalition for an Ethical Psychology, Advisor on Psychology and Ethics for Physicians for Human Rights, where he co-authored the report Experiments in Torture: Evidence of Human Subject Research and Experimentation in the “Enhanced” Interrogation Program, and past-President of Psychologists for Social Responsibility. He has been active in combating torture in all its forms, and is a leader in the movement to remove psychologists and other health professionals from their central role in our nation’s detainee interrogation program. Because of this work, Dr. Reisner was the recipient of the New York State Psychological Association’s “Beacon” Award.
Dr. Reisner has been a consultant on issues of trauma, torture, political violence, disaster response and resilience in the face of catastrophic events for the United Nations, the International Criminal Court, the International Organization for Migrations and other international humanitarian and mental health organizations. He has trained clinicians following war and disaster in Kosovo, Iraq, Haiti, and East Africa. As a teacher, he has been on the faculty of the Clinical Psychology Program at Columbia University, the International Trauma Studies Program and the Institute for Psychoanalytic Education at NYU and the Chinese-American Psychoanalytic Association.
In an earlier career, Dr. Reisner was an Obie-award winning director and actor, whose projects have been performed at the Public Theater, La Mama E.T.C., and Theater for the New City in New York, and on tour in North and South America.