Victoria Stevens, Ph.D. is a clinical psychologist, psychoanalyst, seminar leader, professor, researcher, and speaker who works both nationally and internationally. She holds a BA in philosophy from the University of Kansas, an MA and Ph.D. in clinical psychology from California Graduate Institute and her psychoanalytic certification is from the Psychoanalytic Center of California. Her research specialty is the study of the development and inhibition of creativity in children and adults, with an emphasis on the relationship between creative thinking, neurobiology, emotional development and cognitive processes. She has integrated her experience as a professional cellist, singer, actress and dancer with her expertise in psychology and pedagogical theory to develop innovative art education curricula and teacher training programs. She is on the faculty at California Institute of the Arts in the School of Critical Studies, the Psychoanalytic Center of California, Newport Psychoanalytic Institute, Pacifica Graduate Institute and the Santa Barbara Graduate Institute for Infant and Child Development. She also is on the Board of Directors of the California Alliance for Art Education. She delivers seminars, lectures and in-services in both private and public schools across the country and in Europe - recently returning from lectures given at the prestigious Tavistock Clinic in London and at Cambridge University. She also conducts seminars as part of the Los Angeles Unified School District Intern Program for K-12 teachers titled: The Arts, Imagination and Higher-Order Thinking. She is a teacher and curriculum consultant for the International Center for Education Youth Development, creating and teaching programs focused on the development of creative thinking, empathy, leadership skills and character for Nigerian teenagers, as well as a consultant to Children Uniting Nations creating trainings for academic mentors to foster children. Her upcoming publications include a chapter on “The Importance of Prosodic Elements in the Dyadic Relationship between Infant and Caregiver for the Development of Attachment and Affect Regulation” in a book entitled The Voice and Emotions and Allan Schore’s A Reader’s Guide to Affect Regulation and Neurobiology on which she was a contributing editor. She is the principal investigator on a recently completed study for the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles on the relationship between exposure and training in contemporary visual art and creative thinking and metacognition in elementary school students. The results of the study will be published in the fall of 2007. She is in private practice in West Los Angeles with children, adolescents and adults.