Dr. Almas (Ally) Merchant is a psychoanalytically oriented clinical psychologist who works with children, adolescents, adults, families, and intimate partners at STEPS and in a community mental health setting. Ally strives to help patients engender curiosity within themselves about their mind and their unconscious motivations. Ally’s clinical work is influenced not only by psychoanalysis but also by interdisciplinary critical theory and the impact of culture and history on her patients’ psychological development. Additionally, she has training in integrative medicine for mental health, trauma focused CBT, and Narrative Story Telling for traumatized adults. Besides her clinical work, Ally provides supervision and mentorship to newer clinicians as well as consultation and education around equity, diversity, and inclusion to organizations as well as clinicians to become more intentional around providing inclusionary and liberatory care. She also currently serves as Council Representative to the American Psychological Association for Division 39, Society for Psychoanalysis and Psychoanalytic Psychology and as co-chair for the global issues and global human rights caucus. Finally, she is a co-host for Couched a podcast for learning from and listening to conversations between psychoanalyst, artists, and change makers.
Dr. Merchant is fluent and can provide psychotherapy in English and Hindi/Urdu.