Frances Sommer Anderson, PhD, SEP

Dr. Frances Sommer Anderson is a licensed psychologist (NY State 005532-1) in full-time private practice in New York City, holding a Certificate of Specialization in Psychoanalysis from the New York University Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis. As a Somatic Experiencing Practitioner (SEP) certified by the Somatic Experiencing International Institute, she integrates body-based approaches with contemporary psychoanalytic theory, neuroscience of emotional and cognitive processing, and the neurobiology of attachment, pain, and trauma. She is a member of the Teaching and Consulting Faculty in the Certificate Program for Trauma Studies at the Manhattan Institute for Psychoanalysis in New York City.

Treating people with medical illness, physical disability, and trauma since the beginning of her career in 1974, Dr. Sommer Anderson worked in physical rehabilitation medicine and completed an APA-approved clinical psychology internship at Rusk Institute of Rehabilitation Medicine-NYU Medical Center. She subsequently joined the Psychology Staff at Rusk, where she specialized in psychodiagnostic evaluation and treatment of children and adults with muscular dystrophy and conducted a groundbreaking research study on sexuality and neuromuscular disease, funded by the Muscular Dystrophy Association. In 1979, she began specializing in treating chronic back pain and stress-related physical symptoms, working on the rehabilitation team led by Attending Physician John E. Sarno, MD.

Dr. Sommer Anderson is the co-editor (with Lewis Aron) of 'Relational Perspectives on the Body' (The Analytic Press, 1998; Italian edition 2004) and Contributing Editor of 'Bodies in Treatment: The Unspoken Dimension' (The Analytic Press/Taylor & Francis Group, 2007), both landmark texts in the field of mind-body psychotherapy. In 2013, she co-authored 'Pathways to Pain Relief' with Eric Sherman, Psy.D., a book of case studies illustrating treatment of chronic pain patients diagnosed and referred by Dr. Sarno; a Spanish translation, 'Caminos Hacia El Alivio Del Dolor,' was published in 2020. Her approach incorporates mindfulness meditation and body-based talking therapies alongside psychoanalytic and neuroscientific frameworks.