Robin Stern

Robin Stern is an American psychoanalyst at Yale University, associate director for the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence, an associate research scientist at the Yale Child Study Center, and is on the faculty of Teachers College, Columbia University.

Her publications include the books The Gaslight Effect (2007) and Project Rebirth (2011). Her research includes looking at gratitude and its effects on healing, and a large study examining the effects of negative and positive emotions in students in the US.

Education Stern graduated with a bachelor's degree in psychology from New York University. She received a master's degree in personality and social development from The New School for Social Research, and a PhD in applied psychology and research design from New York University. She gained a post-doctoral certificate in psychoanalytic group psychotherapy from the Postgraduate Center for Mental Health. She co-founded of the Woodhull Institute, created to educate women leaders, and the Inner Resilience Program, established to educate on resilience, created after the September 11 attacks in the United States. According to Ken Fuchsman, writing in The Journal of Psychohistory, Stern was one person who brought the term 'gaslighting' to more widespread attention and he described her book as "essential reading in the age of Trump". They noted that grateful people were better able to deal with stress, recovered more swiftly from illness and were physically stronger.

In 2018, Stern contributed to a study that involved gathering data on negative and positive emotions from over 19,000 grade 9-12 students in the US in 2015, recruited through social media, schools, youth organizations and with the assistance of Lady Gaga, who spoke on behalf of LGBTQ youth. The study showed that due to bullying, LGBTQ students have more negative school experiences than their non-LGBTQ counterparts.

She was a mentor to Courtney E. Martin.

Personal and family Stern lives in New York and has two children.

Selected publications Articles

Books