About
Hello and welcome,
I’m Amalia, and my job is to help people create and maintain good relationships with those who matter to them the most. I do that as a family mediator, as a couples therapist, as a speaker, and as a writer.
I was born in New-York, grew up in Israel, but acquired the most of my academic education in New-York. I have a PhD in Social, Cognitive, and Developmental Psychology, from The New School University, and hold other degrees in Psychology, Anthropology, and Philosophy. My doctoral research examined the inter-connection between immigration, discrimination, and the risk of post-traumatic stress disorder among IDF soldiers. During my doctoral studies, and prior to coming back to Israel in 2004, I was a clinical extern at the “Beth Israel” Hospital (today, “Mount Sinai Beth Israel”) in New-York, in the Psychiatric-Geriatric Unit as well as in Day Unit.
But despite of all of these studies, it took me quite some time to figure out what matters to me the most. Only after having myself divorced and after my father, the prominent cultural figure, Adam Baruch, passed away at the age of 63, I realized: What matters most in life, is love. And since then I know - My goal in life is to help people live with love.
With this is mind, I enrolled at the Couple and Family Therapist Diploma Program at Tel-Aviv University and studied there for two years. During those two years, I fell in love with Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy, the most effective, research-based approach for treating couples in distress. I followed my heart and studied Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy at the Psychology School at the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya. In 2017 I became the first ICEEFT -certified EFT therapist in Israel, recognized by the International Center for Excellence in Emotionally Focused Therapy.
At the same time, I studied Family Mediation. As the daughter of divorced parents, and as a woman who has herself remarried, I believe that the hardest thing about divorce is not the breakup itself, but how it is conducted. Overseeing mediation processes is the hardest thing I do today, but also the most important to me - because of the kids. The couples I mediate might never know what was spared from them, but it is fine by me, as long as I managed to save their kids from the shattering experience of a courtroom divorce.
Today, in 2018, I can definitely say, that it’s a great privilege to be living at a time in which people acknowledge the huge impact that our intimate relationships have on the quality of our lives. I am lucky to be able to teach people how to enjoy their relationship, and I do it with love. I am thankful to my readers, who are following my blog on “Ha’aretz” Health section. In addition, it’s my pleasure to be a regular guest on the popular “Nuclear Family” program on “Galei Tzahal”, and since the start of the year I am a weekly guest on Israel’s premiere Late Evening News on Channel 2. In addition, I give talks at different, academic, private, and business forums. So far during the 2017-2018 academic year, I have lectured at the Columbia University in New-York, at the Sheba-Tel Ha’shomer Hospital, at the Tel-Aviv Municipality Social Services Administrators Forum, and for various private firms.
Yours warmly,
Amalia.