Richard Summers, MD
Co-Director of Residency Training
Richard F. Summers, MD is Clinical Associate Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania. He is responsible for directing psychotherapy training, the didactic curriculum, supervision, and other aspects of outpatient training in the Penn Psychiatry Residency.
Dr. Summers' research interests include the contemporary revision of the theory and technique of psychodynamic psychotherapy, new approaches to psychotherapy training and education, the role of the therapeutic alliance in learning psychotherapy, comprehensive psychodynamic formulation, and positive psychology. His clinical interests focus on combined psychotherapeutic and psychopharmacologic treatment of mood and anxiety disorders, and adult lifecycle development. He is co-author of the recently published Psychodynamic Therapy: A Guide to Evidence Based Practice, now used in numerous psychiatry residency training and psychology graduate programs.
Dr. Summers received a B.A. from Harvard College in 1979, graduating magna cum laude in sociology, and an M.D. from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. Following psychiatry residency at the Institute of Pennsylvania Hospital, Dr. Summers was Director of the Outpatient Evaluation Service, and then Director of the Inpatient Evaluation Unit at the Institute from 1989 through 1997. In 1995, he was appointed Director of Residency Training at the Institute of Pennsylvania Hospital, and then in 1997, he was named Associate Director of Education for Residency Training at the University of Pennsylvania, where he coordinated the merger of the Pennsylvania Hospital Residency into the University of Pennsylvania Psychiatry Residency. He became Co-Director of Residency Training in 2008. Dr. Summers graduated from the Philadelphia Association for Psychoanalysis, and is a faculty member of the Philadelphia Center for Psychoanalysis.
The recipient of numerous teaching awards, including the Earl Bond Outstanding Teacher Award of the Department of Psychiatry at Penn in 2000, the Maestro Award at Pennsylvania Hospital in 2001, the Outpatient Teacher of the Year Award in 2002, 2008 and 2010 at the University of Pennsylvania Department of Psychiatry, and the Irma Bland Award for Excellence in Teaching Residents, Dr. Summers was named a "Top Doc" by Philadelphia Magazine numerous times since 1996. He was awarded the Robert Dunning Dripps Award for Excellence in Graduate Medical Education by the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, and the Psychiatric Educator of the Year by the Philadelphia Psychiatric Society in 2007. He was Teacher of the Year at the Psychoanalytic Center of Philadelphia in 2008.
Dr. Summers is President of the American Association of Directors of Psychiatry Residency Training (AADPRT) and a member of the Advisory Group of the ACGME Psychiatry Milestones Project. He is Chair of the Psychoanalytic and Psychodynamic Teachers' Academy and the Committee on Resident Education at the American Psychoanalytic Association. He is a member of the Council on Medical Education and Lifelong Learning of the American Psychiatric Association, the American College of Psychiatrists, and the Philadelphia Psychiatric Society. Dr. Summers was a Templeton Foundation Senior Fellow at the Center for Positive Psychology at Penn in 2006. Dr. Summers has served as an examiner for the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology from 1993 to 2006. Dr. Summers also maintains a private practice.
< back to Program Leadership page
