Education:
BA in Italian, Brooklyn College, June 1969
Master’s Degree in Social Work, Wurzweiler School of Social Work, Yeshiva University, 1972
Courses at the National Association for Psychoanalysis, 1974-8
Courses at the New Hope Guild, 1977-84
Papers Published:
On Separation and Separateness, Adolescence 1977
Out from Under: Countertransference with the Masochistic Youngster, Child and Adolescent Casework, 1984
Desperate Worship: A View of Love Addiction, in book Psychoanalytic Contributions to Addiction, 1993
Inspiration:
Since childhood, I felt drawn to working in the healing professions, particularly those of social work or psychology. I played psychology as an early teenager, instructing my friend Diane on what malady she should come to my door complaining of. Whereupon I promptly cured her of that trouble and invented another for her. I had been more authentically drawn to combinations of theater arts and interpreting foreign languages, since the latter had been something of a talent. But doubt took over, and the compelling call of healing others, so (unconsciously) they might heal me, took first place.
As a social worker, I spent a lot of time in the busy neighborhoods of New York City helping families facing various economic, social, and family challenges. After graduating, I worked at a residential treatment center for seriously troubled youth, where I was put to the test. With little supervision, I quickly felt overwhelmed trying to be caring while setting boundaries, amid the almost constant provocative rage from children who had already endured abuse.
I realized early on that I had accumulated anger inside me. Overall, my work has been interpersonal since then. It has involved using the therapeutic relationship to heal myself when possible and to become, if you will, more honest and equal in my approach with clients and patients. The challenges were always numerous, but I made an effort to do my part in recovering and repairing, even when I made my share of mistakes.
Working with parents has appealed to me for years, as has working with intergenerational family groups, and I also worked with a therapy group for over ten years.
The Passion of Writing
When I was younger, I had little confidence in my ability to write, particularly creatively, but even in essays. When I worked in residential treatment, someone lent me a large, impressive volume titled Collected Papers On Schizophrenia And Related Subjects (International Universities Press, 1968). A psychiatrist wrote it, Harold F. Searles, who worked intensively with psychotic inpatients at Chestnut Hill Lodge. The book was overwhelming because its author described the crazy, wacky, and at times scary, at times intimate emotions he felt towards his patients. Many of them resonated with me, because who else in the field was talking about feelings of madness as everyday occasions—shall we say normal– in the life of a therapist? I had to write to him, I felt, and so I scribbled off a fan letter to Chestnut Hill Lodge.
After he encouraged me to write a paper about a patient I mentioned, I completed it and then went on a pilgrimage to meet him, with his knowledge and invitation, of course. At that time, he carefully and helpfully critiqued my paper, and from then on, writing became a go-to activity for me that complemented my clinical work. Eventually, it became a major outlet that helped me work through dilemmas in both my work and internal life.
My writing in my four published papers was clinical but also personal, and I must say, earthy. Then I met a psychic, and I thought to myself, This is starting to sound more like a novel.
The psychic was recommended by someone I trusted, and even though it was quite a detour for me, I decided to try it. At the end of our meeting, she stopped me and asked me to sit down in her apartment’s kitchen. She said, with a dramatic and serious expression, “Listen, Carol, you really have to write.” I told her I had written a few clinical papers, and she persisted. “I don’t mean that. Your husband can write a paper (she had never met him), but you have a flair, and you need to write for the public, not just for clinical audiences.”
Okay, I thought, whatever. But right when I got home, I received a call from a friend and colleague saying that a parenting magazine wanted an article on setting limits and then asked if I was interested. Sure, I said, knowing I was turning a corner. In truth, I was meant to write for a more general audience. In truth, I had interrupted my psychoanalytic training not because the material was too difficult. It was rather because when teachers talked about patients, I was squirming uncomfortably, realizing that I was identifying more with the patient in question than with the teacher, author, or therapist.
In Depth
I was a Contributor for Huffington Post from 2008 until 2017. I loved that. I loved the writing, and I loved interviewing and conversing with fascinating people and creators.
After I tried my hand at self-publishing a book on parenting, I sought more practical support and found it within an organization I had joined. The group is called the Group for Dignity and Humiliation Studies, and their newly formed publishing arm is Dignity Press.
The first book was The Human Climate: Facing the Divisions Inside Us and Between Us. It was written in 2019 from a mindset similar to that of a beginner’s mind, in which I asked why society isn’t using all the information available to us to tackle issues like depression, suicide prevention, poverty, and more.
There are a few concepts that I developed in the course of writing this book that can serve as jumping-off points or middle-ground points as you wander into Vulnerability Protected.
They include A. the bully and the brain freeze. This refers to a seemingly inexplicable event when one partner, often a woman, appears frozen or zoned out, and the contradiction often shows up when she is unusually bright and wouldn’t seem easily defeated in an argument with her husband. But he hits a nerve, a nerve where she had been wounded and/or provoked to self-doubt in the past, triggering a trauma response and a reaction of self-doubt in the present. Once she knows the dynamics, she is more likely to begin, with support, to emerge from her previously frozen state and think more clearly.
- This illustrates my idea of the space between clarity and action. It refers to the common belief that if someone sees or knows something clearly, they are obliged to act on that knowledge. For example, a woman finds out her husband is having an affair, and her friends and her inner voice tend to push her to leave him. However, she is not entirely sure she wants to do that. She might stay unsure about whether she truly knows about the affair because, in her mind, clarity must lead to action. Here, a person can relax in the right to take some time without pressure, helping her be both clear and ambivalent at once.
- This features what I call the gift of disappointment. Disappointment can be a gift in developmental terms, for example, if a child who has expected near-perfection begins to learn about life’s disappointments. There is grief, to be sure, but the gift comes when there is no one to blame—it’s nobody’s fault—and a child can learn this without a punitive or shameful attitude from nearby adults.
The New Book: Vulnerability Protected: Visions of a Dancing Mind
This book, due in January 2026, explores the essential element of vulnerability, which is part of all of us. For some in our midst, particularly at the national and cultural levels, there is a great deal of degradation of vulnerability to the point of its denial altogether.
The book weaves the societal context—the current and past— with my personal background, along with stories of trauma from my therapy practice. It is a deep dive in that it marks a trust in my own intuition and creativity.
The Chapter titles are as follows.
Preface
Chapter 1. Vulnerability: The Social Context
Chapter 2. What I bring to the Table
Chapter 3. Vulnerability Crushed: Identifying with the Aggressor
Chapter 4: Whose Vulnerability is it Anyway?
Chapter 5. When Vulnerability Becomes an Addiction
Chapter 6. Vulnerability and Other Fashion Statements
Chapter 7. Vulnerability and the Gift of Disappointment
Chapter 8. Vulnerability Protected
Chapter 9. When Vulnerability Protected Becomes Courage
An Afterword of Sorts
Acknowledgments
What’s more, in less than 200 pages, Vulnerability Protected covers crucial territory that spans both inner and societal trauma.
I presently write for Substack, under the name @AuthenticVoiceshttps://substack.com/@carolsmaldinolcsw
As I grow older (a concept borrowed from Gabor Mate), I aim to communicate with audiences of different sizes and backgrounds on the broad scope of the personal and social issues of our times.
Welcome to my Podcast, where I speak with interesting people in dialogue and curiosity and as I have said, in “unexpected duets”.
Carol Smaldino’s The Human Climate is available on Youtube, and where you listen to your podcasts, Apple, Google and Spotify.
Warm wishes, and feel free to be in touch, and thanks.
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