ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Dr. Waldman’s doctoral dissertation was a Jungian-based study of the creative process that explored the relationship between: how much we face our unconscious & our undeveloped side—and how creative we are. He sensed that one piece of “magic” in this “game of life” had to do with grasping a “special attitude” that allows us to face the terrors of our unconscious emotions & realities. This attitude involves the belief that…we can survive, learn, & even grow stronger from facing that which has been avoided or banished…and now awaits—resurrection. Denying these emotions and injuries—ours and others—degrades and eventually kills our connection to our soul and what’s sacred in life—and so diminishes our creativity.

Since 1981, he’s had a full clinical practice in his NYC West Village office where he’s helped individuals, couples, families, and groups become more creative. He taught "The Artists Search for His Soul: a Psychoanalytic Study" for fifteen years at the New School for Social Research. His interest in creative psychic development evolved into one in empowered living.

In 1988 he moved to Jersey City. For the past 30 years, in his J. C. community work, he's taught & empowered thousands of residents to creatively design their community park renovations by communal meetings and democratic votes. By 1999, he’d led and completed the first great park renovation in J. C. history, based on the input of 551 residents, with Van Vorst Park. In 2004, he founded the Jersey City Parks Coalition--and went on to lead two and support two other major park renovations with this new approach. He’s currently working with residents and the City on the Leonard Gordon Park renovation. This photo of him was taken by the Jersey Journal as it reported on this renovation.

A visit six years ago to the Terra cotta statues in Xi’An, China triggered this book series--two more unconscious motivations seem to be his wish to empower the world’s people as he has as a clinician and community activist--and as does Emperor Qin. He also wants to know why a Jewish boy from NYC married a lotus flower from Zhengzhou.

To see clinical essays and writing on this topic, please click here.