The PsyD Program at XXXX University is my first choice for study at the doctoral level because of your location and the fact that I see my interests as the best fit for your program. A husband of 28 years and a father of a 23-year-old daughter, I am also a cancer survivor and a recovering alcoholic for more than a decade; thus, I feel that I have developed wisdom that will be useful for helping others. In particular, I look forward to continuing to help young men caught up in the juvenile justice system to avoid some of the pitfalls that snare so many young substance abusers, especially teenage alcoholics. I also look forward to helping others to face up to the battle against cancer.

A graduate student in a Clinical Mental Health Program specializing in Reality Therapy, I am a responsible self-starter who communicates well and is dedicated to caring for the mental health of my clients.  Team-oriented with a strong record of establishing solid relationships with clients, co-workers and administration, I pay great attention to detail and documentation and I am well read in the area of professional ethics and public policy.

The internship of more than 700 hours that I completed at XXXX Department of Corrections (DOC) has been formative in my career direction and I have simply become addicted to the challenge presented to our society by teenage substance abusers. I am especially enthused after this experience with the power of group counseling to change the way that young people think, helping them to achieve greater levels of control over their behavior.

I spent most of my adult life in the restaurant business in which I was highly successful; now financially independent at 53 years old, I have turned my full attention to what I love most: the study of psychology, healing, therapy, and most of all counseling. My special passion for counseling which drives my application to the PsyD Degree Program at XXXX University is born in part from my own highly positive experiences over the last couple of decades with counseling for myself, an alcoholic in recovery currently celebrating very close to one full decade of sobriety. Thus, it is easy to see why I am so dedicated to helping others. I have been actively engaged with AA and NA for many years now and have went to our local hospital’s detox and dual diagnosis units to help out as a volunteer on frequent occasions. I am fully focused on salvation and redemption and enjoy nothing more than talking the talk and walking the walk of sobriety. I feel that I can make my strongest contribution to my community in the therapy and rehabilitation of young offenders in the juvenile justice system. I am experienced in this area and I have found that when I share with these young men about my own struggle years ago and the problems that alcohol caused in my life, they listen to me much more intently than they would do so otherwise. From my experience, counseling that comes from the heart and stays close to the bone is the most effective.

As a young business man, earning my BS in Business Marketing back in 1985 was a natural choice. My interest in psychology and mental health - my calling and vocation - was something that developed over time. This coming year, however, in 2017, I will earn my Masters Degree in Clinical Mental Health from XXXX University. Alcoholism and substance abuse are only part of the issues in the psychology of healing in which I look forward to continuing to immerse myself for the balance of my professional a lifetime.  The way I have dealt and continue to deal with my own addiction is to look at myself attentively in the mirror every morning and saying to myself everyday that I'm an alcoholic, mindful of my condition at every moment. I keep my Disease in front of me at all times. This clearly works; otherwise, I would not be maintaining my 4.0 GPA at UXX.

My long term goal is to make a positive change in human lives through the DOC, especially with young offenders. These teenage offenders come from a broad variety of backgrounds with all different types of obstacles in their path that they must overcome. I feel very strongly that juvenile offenders are in a separate moral category than their adult counterparts and that they deserve special consideration and investment. Everything that applies to the adult offender in terms of deserving another chance, a shot at rehabilitation and re-insertion into society: much more so does it apply to the offender who is a legal minor. They deserve a special chance; an education and the assistance that they need to overcome the obstacles that stand in their way to becoming a productive member of society. I firmly believe that some will be very successful if they follow a well put together program that has guidelines and parameters that effectively prepare them for re-entry into society. I firmly believe that many if not most juvenile offenders could become very successful members of the community if they were to follow a program that had well designed guidelines and parameters that effectively prepared them for re-entry.

Several of the clients that I have worked with stand out in my mind and I continue to reflect upon them and their situation. I had very intense conversations with AH, for example, who was in a sexual offender group at the age of 19.   According to him, his victim was 13 years old and he was 18 and he was set up because she never told him her real age and he never asked.  Throughout all of our long sessions he went into great detail on what actually transpired.  For the first few sessions, I could not put my finger on it.  But then, after reviewing my notes, by the third session I could see that things just didn’t add up and I realized that AH was a chronic liar.  Almost every single thing that he told me was contradicted by something else that he said in a group or in a subsequent session. I reflected on the possibility that AH has Extreme Narcissistic Personality Disorder.  I have heard that one cannot change a narcissist, that they must change themselves. In the fourth session with AH I began to expose his discrepancies.  I thought that he might either shut completely down and/or feel rage at being exposed; most likely continuing in his narcissistic way of thinking and interacting. AH was one of my first clients in the DOC and he was not my greatest success. Nevertheless, with AH I became aware of the fact that my age was an asset, and that I was shown at least a minimal amount of respect because of my real life experiences. He left me with the impression that I had resources that a younger counselor may not have, at least with AH. 

Another inmate I will never forget is MJ, a 17 year old inmate sentenced to life.  During my fifth week in the DOC I learned that MJ’s mother had passed away unexpectedly.  Since I had already met with him on several occasions in regard to behavior incidents, I was selected to tell him that his mother had passed away.  I was a nervous wreck because there is no easy way or text book example on how to handle a situation such as this.  When MJ walked into the meeting room in cuffs and shackles, he asked why he was meeting with me.  I said to him: “I have some bad news for you.” MJ screamed “what happened to my mom?”  I looked at him and said nothing, only staring into his eyes.  At that point, MJ fell on the floor and began sobbing.  I went over to him and sat down next to him to show support.  MJ never knew his father, his mother was a crack addict and he grew up on the streets of Philadelphia.  As I sat with him on the floor for nearly the entire session he finally asked me what had happened to his mother.  I told him that it was a tragic accident involving a tractor trailer and that she passed instantly.  MJ looked at me and said: “That’s a relief to know that she wasn’t shot and she didn’t suffer.  She died with some dignity.”  I was assigned to counsel MJ for an hour every week and I tried to see him about three times a week and it usually worked out.  After about a month of grief counseling, I saw MJ in the general population and he came up to me and said, “Mr C I just want to thank you for the way you told me of my mother’s passing.  I knew it was hard for you but I’m glad it was you.  Thank you.”  That was the most rewarding experience I’ve had in counseling so far and I want more. 

I believe that many of the problems our society faces today are a direct result of negative behavior that is learned from parents as well as society as a whole. The reason that I want to earn my Psyd is to learn by experience with a hands-on clinical approach. I firmly believe that the best way to learn is through experience, being there, putting what one preaches into practice.

I thank you for your consideration of my application to XXXX University.

I ask for acceptance to earn the PsyD Degree at the XXXX Institute so that I might add the final and most important professional hat to my repertoire of historically interconnected or culminating roles. First, I gave my all for my country as a soldier; then I became an Episcopal Priest. Since June of 2014, I have served as the Director of Admissions at the XXXX School Prior to this position, I served for two years as a parish priest at XXXX Episcopal Church in XXXX. The cause to which I have decided to vote the balance and hopefully by far most significant part of my professional life is that of helping our veterans to heal. My comrades have been thrust into questionable moral situations for a very long time, forced to engage in many morally questionable activities, and with all too great a frequency fall into moral decay, as a result of stress, violence, and in some cases their own moral failure. I see the Wright Institute as the best fit for my interests, an academic community in which to find support and ideas to empower and inspire me to write a doctoral dissertation on the subject of Moral Injury and how it is related to PTSD.

I look forward to many decades to come fully immersed in an exploration of the ways that Moral Injury has, in the words of Rut Gubkin: "biological, emotional, neurological and spiritual and/or existential dimensions." As a priest of ecumenical formation, I believe that I have education/training/experience that will prove to be of great value in the development of models for healing that incorporate spirituality from a diverse body of religious backgrounds with a central focus on spirituality itself, rather than spirituality as it exists within any given religious tradition. I am especially interested in first studying, perhaps even helping to perfect or contribute to the development of Moral Injury Event Scales (MIES). I am pleased that there is already an extensive body of literature with which I have to work as a foundation, helpful data regarding moral injury resulting from transgressions by others, transgressions by self, and transgression by betrayal, resulting in stress, PTSD, feelings of hopelessness, pessimism, anger and rage.

I look forward to connecting some of the dots from my own experience as a soldier, with Moral Injury Theory which suggests, for example, that those who suffer Moral Injury as a result of the transgressions of others rather than their own are especially susceptible to PTSD. I saw this to be glaringly true of the poor fellows who I interacted with in the mortuary affairs unit overseas. They are the ones who process the bodies of those killed in action. They processed both Americans and the local Iraqi population who were killed in action (KIA). It's a terrible thing to see a mother and father lying on a table next to their children, the entire family KIA. It is even worse to see this several times a day, almost every day, for long periods of time. As if this were not yet tragic enough, these soldiers were well aware that many if not most of these casualties of war that come from air strikes that are not reported on the news and sometimes not reported at all. The transgressions of others often occur by people making simple mistakes with deadly consequences; these transgressions are also the most heavily correlated with PTSD.

Transgressions of self, on the other hand, have been shown to be more strongly associated with hopelessness, pessimism, and anger. One young marine from my unit was the gunner on top of a vehicle and the driver fell asleep and lost control, flipped the vehicle, and the young marine was crushed and mangled beyond recognition. Despite the fact that what happened was an accident, the driver of this vehicle is likely to experience more trauma than would have been the case if he had fallen asleep in civilian traffic and taken a life—due to the sheer chaos and ambiguity of combat. Adrenaline, fear, and a desire for revenge can be most lethal combinations resulting in soldiers all too frequently transgressing their own sense of morality in the heat of battle, making split-second decisions that will haunt them for a lifetime, leaving the with invisible scars that are sometimes not easy to detect.

I am especially concerned with the variety of ways in which Transgressionsof Self in warfare can have deadly consequences. One suicidal young marine that I dealt with in my office stands out in my mind. He had been standing guard on a dirt road in Fallujah when a car was approaching his checkpoint. The car was not slowing down so he aimed his rifle at the driver and pulled the trigger. The bullet struck the driver in the head and the car came to a slow stop. There was a 5 year old boy in the front seat covered in his father’s blood. The young boy was crying uncontrollably as the driver was still grasping for his last few breathes. Radio communication was not working properly and the marine who pulled the trigger spent 2 hours with the young boy and his now-dead father before backup arrived. This had happened 3 months prior to our conversation. I glanced down at his boots and noticed that the bloodstains were still there.

Finally, I seek to excel in Moral Injury Theory and PTSD treatment in my research concerning “Betrayal.”  The damage that occurs from the perception of being morally betrayed is especially evident among Iraq veterans who feel strongly that they were betrayed by their government because they were required to fight an unjust war, and that the blood that has been spilled in Iraq has been spilled in vain. The struggle to recover for these veterans who suffer from a sense of Betrayal is compounded by the fact that evidence has continued to emerge that they were indeed sent to war on the basis of false intelligence (no weapons of mass destruction). Many joined the military because they felt that they were serving a greater purpose after the country was attacked on 9-11. Now they have to deal with the fact that Saddam/Iraq had nothing to do with 9-11. They are left with the unsettling question about the atrocities of war they participated in and what was it all for? 

My central objective in life has always been to serve others, first in the military, followed by the ministry; these days I mostly serve the needs of prospective graduate students. My experiences as a priest in the Episcopal Church have given me a platform for making connections with groups on every level, from the Bay Area to internationally. I have valuable connections to important people that will help me to excel, with the leaders of Episcopal Relief and Development (ERD) for example, an international relief and development agency that is currently operating in over 40 countries. This is also why I feel strongly that I am an especially good fit with The XXXX Institute since your motto is "Educating Clinicians to Society.” 10 years from now I hope to be serving as a psychologist with ERD, working on an interdisciplinary team of medical doctors, nurses and social workers.

My ideal roles and responsibilities include that of educator as well as clinician providing psychological services in the various parts around the globe served by ERD to populations that have been displaced by war, within refugee camps, and areas affected by natural disaster. As an educator I want to be a valuable resource to the leadership of ERD concerning the needs that exist for psychological services in crises areas around the globe, in addition to attending to the psychological needs of the staff and volunteers of ERD. Over the course of the last 2 years, I have come to increasingly recognize a calling to pursue a new career direction in clinical psychology, meeting twice a month with a therapist about this career change. I feel confident that I am making the right decision and have the support of my wife as well, an attorney with an established practice here in XXXX, and most certainly one of the most valuable of my social connections and human resources.

I appreciate XXXX’s commitment to diversity, social justice and equality and how you require students to be in a field placement getting real world experience each year of the program, including the first year. I want to gain as much experience as possible and I believe that getting real world experience while in the midst of academic study is an effective strategy for creative learning. The therapist whom I have worked with for over a year about my career change is a Psychiatrist and Marriage and Family Therapist and he suggested the Wright Institute. I very much admire the research endeavors of your faculty, most especially the work of Dr. XXXX and his research into anxiety disorder. A former Lutheran minister, I particularly look forward to comparing notes with and learning from Dr. XXXX.

In addition to Moral Injury among veterans, I am also looking forward to an in-depth study of the extent to which Moral Injury occurs in non-military, even non-violent situations. I want to study the history and range of both PTSD and Moral Injury in an exhaustive fashion, especially in light of ethical transgressions, attorneys who make poor life/death decisions for their clients, negligent doctors or nurses, financiers that have committed fraud; at least theoretically the possibilities are endless, hence the search for the best way to define or delimit definitions of these terms in psychology that have become increasingly important to our efforts to diagnose and cure, especially our veterans returning from the field. I thank you for considering my application. 

I am a young Korean woman educated in Japan who now lives in America and wants very much to excel in the area of psychology. I have fallen in love with California and hope to complete my graduate studies here. Since I majored in “Cultural Properties” or issues in Japan, I particularly enjoy studying the complex relationships, at once psychological and historical, that exist among various different Asian groups here in California. The greatest strength of my application to your program is that I am one of few Korean applicants who are fully fluent in Japanese as well as Korean, helping me to bridge one of the most prominent and historically bitter divides in Asia resulting from Japan’s historic occupation of your country.

I feel strongly that much of what I studied in Japan has immediate and profound relevance to the study of psychology, especially the psychology of cultural differences, barriers, and/or conflicts, particularly those that involve language. The XXXX is my first choice for graduate study because I feel that I am the best fit for your particular program. I deeply respect your commitment to seeing mental health and mental illness in socio-cultural contexts and your hearty endorsement of research and intervention that is relevant to the multiple cultures in which they are conducted. 

My application is further strengthened by my service as a Volunteer Peer Mentor at the XXXX, in XXXX , Japan (July 2008 - October 2009). I helped newly arrived international students to adjust to their new environment helping them to meet people and to learn to interact with people from many different countries all at the same time. In fact, I advised resident students on a broad range of issues, personal as well as academic, as well as helping to organize and implement international cultural exchange and recreation programs and events. I believe that this experience will help me to think creatively about the many multicultural issues facing Asian residents of California as well.

My passionate interest in psychology began during my high school days as a result of my own mental health challenges. Even though I had good grades in my classes, I began to suffer from chronic depression. It is very common in Korea for adolescents to suffer from mental illnesses due to the great amount of academic pressure that is piled upon them in a very competitive educational system. Students in Korea are often made to attend classes from 7am to 10pm, as I did, going to private schools at night. Surveys have shown that most Korean high school students sleep only 4 to 5 hours a night.

I went through a very difficult period in high school where I felt that I had lost my goals in  life and I suffered from low self-esteem. At times, I even felt that life was meaningless since we would all just die anyway. I even had thoughts about suicide. (As in Japan, our suicide rate for adolescents under pressure is alarmingly high.) Thankfully my mother convinced me to see a psychiatrist and soon I was undergoing treatment, counseling and art therapy, for my depressive disorder. At that time, I began to learn to look inside myself, observing my feelings and behavior with new, more critical eyes. Soon, I recovered from my depression as a result of intensive and highly successful treatment. My extremely positive experience in recovery set me on a road to pursuing a career in psychology.

I had a wonderful psychologist by the name of Dr. XXXX who changed my life completely for the better, helping me to see things in a much more positive light and to learn to monitor and control my feelings. I was able to see things much differently. Dr. XXXX helped me to control my feelings through reflection, critical thinking, and discipline. I began reading extensively in the area of psychology in my free time and by the time I was ready to begin college I knew that I wanted to pursue a career in the area of mental health and dedicate my life to the cultivation of new ways to see the world in a more positive light through psychological discovery.

About the same time that my interest in psychology took off, my mother also began to study psychology, coinciding with her volunteer work as a counselor at a high school guiding juvenile delinquents. She told me many stories about her work that also served to deepen my interest in the power of counseling. I became immediately apparent to my mother and I both that many of these troubled juveniles were suffering from mental illnesses as a result of some type of trauma or abuse, often at the hands of their parents.

I chose to major in Cultural Properties in Japan because of my fascination with culture and the impact that it has on our psychology. I spent four years on this intriguingIsland taking courses mostly concerning ‘Cultural Heritage Conservation Science’ at XXXX University, located in Kyushu.  I learned a great deal about cultural restoration, in particular, and componential analyses of heritage. Studying culture was especially useful to me since I also served as a Counselor at the XXXX House as well, facing so many cultural issues in a fully international context.

.After my graduation, I returned to Korea and began working for a trading company. Soon, I faced another serious challenge to my mental health as I was shocked to experience a panic attack in a subway station which left me with the after effect of feeling scared when using overcrowded subways or buses, which are unavoidable in Korea. I plunged into a full immersion in the literature about panic disorders and this has helped me to become much stronger. Now, here in America, I feel I am at the optimal moment in my intellectual and emotional maturity to study in your distinguished program.

XXXX University is my first choice to earn the PsyD for a variety of reasons in addition to my profound admiration of your advanced curriculum and the streamlined character of your program. My drive to earn the PsyD at XXXX is a direct result of my extensive experience with special needs children—beginning with my own 2 children. My daughter Ingrid will turn 15 in May; intellectually gifted, she has done outstandingly well given the fact that she was diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome in pre-school. My son Lars, who just turned 12, still struggles with learning disabilities and has many characteristics of ADHD.

As I continued to reflect on and learn from our experience, I became increasingly engaged with the subject of psychological assessment and the pivotal role that it plays in diagnosis and subsequently treatment. I think in terms of windows of opportunity, especially in the case of my daughter. I hope to publish in this area and give it my all for the balance of my professional life. Thus, it would be a great honor for me to have the privilege of studying under Dr. XXXX whose work on assessment I deeply admire, along with Dr. XXXX in the area of school-based consultation and Dr. XXXX in the areas of risk, resiliency, transition and diversity issues.

My goal of earning a Doctorate of Psychology at XXXX University is informed by my passion for helping others, a passion that grew out of my experiences with my own childhood medical trauma, teenage learning difficulties, raising children with special education needs and my struggle as a single parent as well—on top of two decades of professional experience as a school psychologist. I first became aware of the benefits of psychological intervention and counseling when I was a teenager. Following a childhood illness that required extended hospitalization, I struggled throughout my teens with my own learning challenges and behavioral concerns. These issues were greatly intensified by the economic problems my family faced and the fallout from moving no less than ten times by the time I turned seventeen. Recognizing the lack of structure in our life, and wanting me to acquire positive study habits and motivation, my mother enrolled me in Catholic School. As part of my high school journey, I was fortunate enough to receive psychological counseling.  The benefits of this experience helped me enormously to succeed socially and emotionally as well as academically. The feeling of hope and gratitude that I took with me from my counseling experience helped to empower me to establish a peer counseling organization at my high school, where none had existed before.

In my 20s and 30’s, the challenges of raising children, a divorce when they were still little, and the pressures of my continuing education and reintegration into the workforce led me to further psychological treatment as well as other modes of therapy, including trauma workshops which were something still quite novel at the time. I am convinced that the emotional growth and pragmatic skill set that I have nourished over the years will empower me to excel in your PsyD program and make creative contributions to your academic community. I profoundly enjoy gardening, long-distance running, and I am in the process of becoming a yoga instructor. These activities have further enhanced my sense of psychological wholeness along with my fervent determination to help others.

After earning my MA and beginning my practice as a school psychologist, I began working with students diagnosed with Aspergers Syndrome, since, as a result of my daughter Ingrid’s struggle, by this time I was recognized by my many of my peers as a specialist in the area of autism. My Master’s studies had only touched on Asperger’s Syndrome, however, as this diagnosis was still new at this time; thus, I found myself devoting countless hours to independent research, educating myself about the symptoms and behaviors related to ASD and the implications for school based interventions. In the years that followed, I continued my personal research in Autism along with ASD, ADHD, and a multitude of other learning disabilities, with the goal of helping individuals in a school setting.

I have been faced with the challenge of balancing my duty and loyalty to the school system on the one hand, and serving as an advocate for the student and their family on the other hand, which has probably been the most difficult aspect of my work so far. Dealing with this tension on a case-by-case basis for the last 20 years has left me fascinated by issues of professional ethics in child and school psychology, especially in the case of special needs children and this is one of the areas in which I would also like very much to publish in the future as I continue to cultivate my professional sensitivity and leadership abilities.

At this stage in my career, I have a well-developed understanding of the growing demands put on school systems due to governmental requirements and complex, ever-changing societal issues.  This has and will continue to increase the need for school psychologists with exceptional capacity to deal with numerous complex issues simultaneously. I have always had a strong sense of motivation and responsibility to stay current in my field and I believe that XXXX’s PsyD Program represents the ideal platform on which to continue to grow in every way, particularly as a professional psychologist. I feel strongly that, after earning the PsyD, I will be able to realize my fullest potential as a school psychologist based on my experience of almost 2 decades of discovery of my old children's need for involvement in special education, on top of my professional responsibilities and advocating for friends and family members on how to navigate their children's needs. I have developed great empathy for and an understanding of the day-to-day issues faced by special needs students and their families and I look forward to sharing some of my most memorable experiences in class discussions at XXXX.

My current job is an excellent fit for me while my children complete high school and I earn my PsyD. After we complete these hurdles, however, I hope to transition to a position of greater responsibility that will enable me to put my leadership skills to fuller use in the area of program development; and I hope to teach at some point in an institution of higher learning. In the same way that attending college is now a natural next step for many of the students with whom I work, becoming a professor of psychology on a college campus will be my natural next step forward, all of us snatching victory together from the jaws of defeat.

I thank you for considering my application to your distinguished program.

I hope to be accepted to your program because my long term goal is to work as a clinical forensic psychologist performing psychological evaluations of competency to stand trial and assessments of diminished capacity. My paralegal education and experience working as a family and criminal law paralegal have provided me with the opportunity to gain great familiarity with legal jargon and issues in this area, as well as the opportunity to interact with legal professionals. I have a firm grasp of the rules and regulations of the American judicial system, especially hearsay evidence. Thus, once I attain the PsyD Degree from your esteemed program, then I would be qualified to serve as a highly credible, expert witness. With a Masters Degree in Clinical Psychology, I would not qualify for court designation as an expert witness, since this requires a doctoral degree. Without a doctorate degree in Psychology, I would also be unable to solely administer and interpret diagnostic testing to be used in court. Thus, it is my profound hope to be admitted as a doctoral student to your program.

 I want very much to study in XXXX because of the location, as well as the exceptional quality of your program. I want to remain close to my family who fully support my decision to pursue the doctorate degree. This would also facilitate my being able to give my all to my studies. I was raised in the northwest suburbs of Chicago and currently live in XXXX, IL. I earned by BA in Psychology at Aurora in 2007 with a specialization in biopsychology and a minor in physiological science, later, my paralegal certificate from Roosevelt University’s post-bachelorette American Bar Approved institution for paralegal studies. I have also completed 38 credits of graduate course work that are transferable towards a graduate degree in Clinical Psychology. I am also an accomplished world traveler and have an extensive record of commitment to volunteerism in my community.

 Another reason why I wish to pursue a doctoral degree in Psychology is because of the extremely positive personal experience that I had in counseling. My therapist renewed my confidence and self-esteem, encouraging me that I could achieve anything that I set my mind to. The impact of this experience and my passion and commitment for making a positive difference in people’s lives has given me determination to succeed in your program program, since it represents the fulfillment of my purpose in my life.

 I especially look forward to studying in the areas of psychology and law; psychological assessment; and psychological interventions in forensic settings. Your faculty consists of highly distinguished professors who have made invaluable contributions to the literature. Thus, I have no doubt that your program will offer me the highest possible quality of instruction in the fundamental theories and knowledge of forensic psychology and also provide me with state-of-the-art training in planning, conducting, and evaluating research. My interests match closely with Dr. XXXX’s work on juvenile violence. I particularly enjoyed his child & adolescent development course, where I wrote a literature review entitled, “Neurological Development:  A Review of Adolescent Development, Brain Imaging, and Juvenile Justice” which explored the issues of juvenile delinquency in the context of brain, cognitive, psychosocial, and especially adolescent development, including brain development, cognitive development.