Orna Guralnik is an internationally recognized and highly celebrated Israeli-American clinical psychologist, psychoanalyst, author, and public intellectual, and one of the main therapists of the critically acclaimed Showtime and Paramount+ documentary series Couples Therapy.
Guralnik’s ability to deeply and compassionately assist her clients with a therapeutic style that is both calm and analytical has brought authentic psychotherapy into the mainstream culture. She balances an esteemed private clinical practice in NYC with her role as a faculty member, researcher, writer, and lecturer on trauma, dissociation, relationships, and psychoanalytic theory.
Orna Guralnik Biography | |
|---|---|
| Real Name: | Orna Guralnik |
| Birth Date: | 1964 |
| Age (approx.): | 62 Years |
| Birthplace: | Washington, DC, USA |
| Parents: | Daniel and Nehama Guralnik |
| Husband: | Dr. Stephen Hartman |
Early Life
Orna Guralnik was born on 1st October in Washington, DC, to Israeli parents. Her father, Daniel Guralnik, was an aeronautical engineer and subsequently held professional positions related to aeronautics and aerospace. Her mother, Nehama Guralnik, started studying architecture and went on to become an art curator with the Tel Aviv Museum of Art.
She grew up in the USA for the first few years of her life and then, at about seven, moved there permanently. Circumstances of the family’s relocation from suburban life in America to post-war Tel Aviv gave rise to a major emotional and cultural adjustment. Guralnik has been open about how deeply she felt watching her parents struggle along and adapt to each other in the wake of the move, which influenced her early notions about couples’ relationships.
After fulfilling her national military service with the Israel Defense Forces, Guralnik started her studies at the university in Tel Aviv. She originally studied film studies and wanted to become a filmmaker. A personal experience of therapy during her teens, however, had a therapeutic change of direction for her towards psychology and psychoanalysis.
She later moved to the United States to further her education and received her Doctorate in Clinical Psychology (PsyD) from the Ferkauf Graduate School of Psychology in New York. She completed her doctorate and then worked for nearly a decade as an advanced postdoctoral in psychoanalytic training at the NYU Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis, where she developed the clinical philosophy that guides her work.
Orna Guralnik Career
Dr. Orna Guralnik developed her professional reputation slowly, over many years of clinical practice, psychoanalytic education, and academic research, before becoming a well-respected expert in the field of television. She has established a highly respected private practice in New York City, focusing on relational dynamics, trauma, dissociation, and couples therapy.
She takes a psychoanalytical approach and has a systems perspective of relationships, seeing couples as “emotional systems” rather than “individuals.” Along with clinical practice, Guralnik spent a great deal of time teaching, as well as leading institutions.
Orna Guralnik joined the faculty of the NYU Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis as well as the faculty of the National Institute for the Psychotherapies (NIP). Her research interests were topics such as depersonalization, transgenerational transmission of trauma, gender, culture, and psychoanalysis’s socio-political aspects.
She is also the founding director of Mount Sinai Medical School’s Center for the Study of Dissociation and Depersonalization, which focuses on the study of complex psychological disorders that often follow trauma and identity disturbances. She was involved in the scholarly writing and editing of several psychoanalytic journals and professional publications as well, in addition to her teaching.
Guralnik was honored in 2019 with the Showtime premiere of Couples Therapy. The series consists of real couples who sit for unscripted therapy sessions with Guralnik, providing a window into real therapy processes that rarely get seen in public. The show received praise in contrast to reality TV’s sensationalism for its intellectual content, emotional realism and moral gravity.
Personal Life
Orna Guralnik is a very private person with respect to her love life and relationships. She deliberately withholds from public discourse most of the particulars of her family and close relationships, in keeping with the ethical boundaries generally observed in psychoanalysis.
Orna Guralnik has talked about experiencing relationships and couples therapy from personal and professional experiences, but never made public statements about a spouse or significant other. She is also said to have two children and is extremely private about her family, even in the face of reports.
Social Media Presence
Unlike a lot of today’s media personalities, Dr. Orna Guralnik has a relatively quiet yet powerful online presence. She has built up approximately 194K followers on her Instagram page, @ornaguralnik, largely because of Couples Therapy’s popularity and the growing public understanding of the dynamics of relationships and the popularity of psychotherapy.
Orna Guralnik Net Worth
Dr. Orna Guralnik’s net worth hasn’t been disclosed. But she appears to be one of the wealthier NYC private psychotherapists and psychoanalytical consultants. It has been estimated that she had multiple sources of income, including her private clinical practice, television, academic teaching, consulting, lectures, and published research work.