J. Walter Freiberg III, PhD, JD
J.W. Freiberg III holds a PhD from UCLA and a JD from Harvard Law School. This double training enabled Dr. Freiberg to serve for over thirty years as General Counsel to Boston’s principal children’s social service and adoption agencies, and as attorney to scores of private mental health clinics. As the decades passed, Dr. Freiberg recognized that the psychiatrist and psychologists who sought his advice were increasingly likely to describe their patient as socially isolated and painfully lonely. Freiberg, who has been called “the Oliver Sacks of law” by America’s most famous psychiatrist, Bessel van der Kolk, MD, shares stories of these spell-binding cases with us in three books which each won awards for “Best Book of the Year in Psychiatry/Psychology.” Four Seasons of Loneliness: A Lawyer’s Case Stories appeared in 2016; Growing Up Lonely: Disconnection and Misconnection in the Lives of Our Children was published in 2019; and Surrounded by Others and Yet So Alone followed in 2020. Dr. Freiberg has been interviewed on NPR and scores of podcasts, with over seventy of these being accessible on his website, thelonlinessbooks.com.
Speaker Disclosures:
Financial: J. Walter Freiberg, III receives royalties as a published author and has employment relationships with Hale & Dorr, the Boston University, and visiting lecturer with École Pratique des Hautes Études. He is general counsel to the Trauma Research Foundation, Inc. and is a consultant with Godfrey Foundation for Cinema Therapy. J. Walter Freiberg, III receives a speaking honorarium from Psychotherapy Networker and PESI, Inc. He has no relevant financial relationships with ineligible organizations.
Non-financial: J. Walter Freiberg, III has no relevant non-financial relationships.
