James Tobin, Ph.D.

Licensed Clinical Psychologist
PSY 22074

Dr. Tobin is a licensed clinical psychologist who specializes in individual therapy with adolescents and young adults, couples therapy, and parent guidance. His clinical work emphasizes the role of the parent-child relationship in identity formation, character development, and the quality of relationships across the lifespan. Key aspects of the parent-child relationship including emotional containment, the nature of attachment, and interpersonal/family system dynamics set the stage, in Dr. Tobin’s view, for one’s capacity to utilize effectively his or her emotional life and build meaningful bonds with others. Dr. Tobin works with adolescents and young adults with mood, personality, and substance abuse issues that typically arise in the context of emotional and relational challenges inherent in this developmental stage. He also works directly with parents who need support in building the quality of the relationship with their teenager while also maintaining influential power and authority. Dr. Tobin has created a direct observational coding system using videotape analysis to assess relational dynamics in conflictual parent-teen relationships called ARCCTM; the assessment results gained by this tool are then used to inform clinical interventions.

Dr. Tobin received an A.B. magna cum laude in Psychology and Social Relations from Harvard University, and a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. He conducted his internship and post-doctoral training with a dual child/adult emphasis at the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH)/Harvard Medical School. Dr. Tobin’s academic training focused on how the capacity to form and maintain romantic relationships is affected by relational distress early in life. He has conducted empirical research on the nature of attachment between depressed suicidal adolescents and their parents, leading to a clinical orientation that emphasizes the interpersonal processes underlying diverse forms of distress and psychiatric conditions.

Currently, Dr. Tobin is in private practice in Newport Beach, CA, and is Assistant Professor of Clinical Psychology at Argosy University/The American Professional School of Professional Psychology. He is a former advanced candidate in psychoanalysis at the Psychoanalytic Institute of New England, East and former staff psychologist in the Department of Psychiatry at MGH and Clinical Instructor, Harvard Medical School.