Jefferson Fish

Who is Jefferson Fish?

Jefferson M. Fish is a professor emeritus of psychology at St. John's University in New York City, where he previously served as Chair of the Department of Psychology and as Director of the PhD Program in Clinical Psychology.

Fish was born in Manhattan in 1942, the grandson of Eastern European Jewish immigrants. After spending his internship year—1966-1967, the height of the hippie era—at the Langley Porter Neuropsychiatric Institute in San Francisco, he returned to New York to complete his studies during the Columbia riots. He received his PhD in clinical psychology from Columbia University and was a postdoctoral fellow at the State University of New York at Stony Brook.

Although Fish had begun graduate school with the intention of becoming a psychoanalyst, he did a Rogerian PhD dissertation, followed by a postdoctoral program in behavior therapy. It was during his postdoctoral year that he developed his interests in hypnosis, placebo, and paradoxical interventions —leading ultimately to his involvement with family therapy.