Eric R. Marcus, MD is Director of the Columbia University Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research and professor of clinical psychiatry at the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons. He is a training and supervising psychoanalyst.He is a distinguished life fellow of the American Psychiatric Association, and a fellow of the New York Academy of Medicine and of the American College of Psychoanalysts. His teaching awards include the Columbia University President's Teaching Award, the Roeske teaching award of the American Psychiatric Association, the Shabshin teaching award of the American Psychoanalytic Association, the regional teaching award of the Association for Academic Psychiatry, and several College of Physician and Surgeons teaching awards including Commencement Speaker.He is past president of the New York County district branch of the American Psychiatric Association and a past president of the Association for Psychoanalytic Medicine.His areas of research involve symbolic alterations of reality, in psychotic and near psychotic phenomena, and in social psychoanalytic science research using medical student dreams to study the effect of medical pedagogy and the stages of development of the capacity for medical empathy.