Carlton Cornett

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Carlton Cornett (born February 15, 1961) is a social worker, psychotherapist, author, and educator whose diverse work has included pioneering books on gay-affirmative psychotherapy. and spirituality. His latest book, Being with Patients: An Introduction to the Psychotherapy of Harry Stack Sullivan, M.D. and Otto Allen Will, Jr., M.D. (published in 2018), outlines the history and current practice of psychodynamic interpersonal psychotherapy.

Biography

Cornett attended Huntingdon College in Montgomery, Alabama and received a Bachelor of Arts degree (Summa Cum Laude) in 1982. He received a Master of Social Work degree from the University of Georgia in 1984. He “came out” as a gay man in 1983 and his sexual orientation – and the societal response to it – lead to his interest in establishing a form of psychotherapy founded on the idea that homosexuality is innately healthy.

Career

Early influences on Cornett’s thinking included students of the humanistic psychotherapist, Carl Rogers, Ph.D., as well as those of the developmental psychoanalyst Erik Erikson, and the founder of interpersonalism, Harry Stack Sullivan, M.D.

In 1993 his first book, Affirmative Dynamic Psychotherapy with Gay Men, was published. On this volume he collaborated with other pioneers in affirmative psychotherapy, particularly Charles Silverstein, Ph.D. and the late Richard Isay, M.D., to provide models of dynamic psychotherapy which did not pathologize homosexuality.

Reclaiming the Authentic Self: Dynamic Psychotherapy with Gay Men, Cornett’s second book, was published in 1995. It became a top-ten bestseller on The Psychotherapy Book News. Cornett integrated a variety of views – dynamic and existential – in developing an affirming psychotherapy for gay men.

Cornett, who maintains an interest in human spiritual development, penned a 1992 Op-Ed to the journal Social Work suggesting that the biopsychosocial model be expanded to encompass spirituality – a biopsychosociospiritual model. An invitation from The Free Press (a division of Simon & Schuster) to expand his views resulted in his 1998 book, The Soul of Psychotherapy: Recapturing the Spiritual Dimension in the Therapeutic Encounter

In private practice in Nashville, Tennessee since 1997, Cornett taught at Tennessee State University and, since 2007 has been a clinical assistant professor in the department of psychiatry at the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine. For much of that period he has been engaged in an intensive study of the life and work of Harry Stack Sullivan (1892-1949), the gay founder of American interpersonalism and its extension by Sullivan's student, Otto Allen Will, Jr., M.D. This study was published in early 2018 with a preface by Kim Chernin, Ph.D. Chernin's memoir of her work with Otto Will which was an important early influence on Cornett.

Carlton Cornett

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