Auran Piatigorsky, PhD, CMPC

I am a licensed clinical sport psychologist in private practice specializing in high-performance sport. I am also an Assistant Clinical Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, where I conduct research, teach and supervise graduate students, and work with Cal Athletics. In my private practice, I provide clinical services and performance consultation to athletes, coaches, teams, and sports medicine staff across elite club, collegiate, professional, national-team, and Olympic settings. My approach, Dialectical Sports Skills (DSS), integrates evidence-based cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) and dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) methods with sport psychology principles. Nearly four decades of experience in crisis, hospital, residential, correctional, outpatient, and sport settings has shaped DSS. In my research, I am developing the Performance Capacity Index, a new measure of psychological factors that affect athletic performance. This framework informs my performance services, while my clinical services draw on my prior research in developmental psychopathology at the University of Colorado Boulder, the National Institute of Mental Health, the University of Oslo, the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of California, San Francisco. Before becoming a psychologist, I worked as a wilderness therapist and outdoor educator, guiding extended expeditions around the world. This work required sustained performance under pressure, mental and physical hardship, and prolonged stress, challenges familiar to serious athletes. After a back injury, I pivoted toward psychology. Helping others heal drew me to clinical psychology, and being an adventure sport athlete drew me to performance psychology. I earned an undergraduate degree in English at the University of Colorado Boulder, and my PhD in clinical psychology at the University of California, Berkeley. I completed an American Psychological Association (APA)-accredited predoctoral internship and postdoctoral fellowship at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) Medical Center, where I later served as Assistant and then Associate Clinical Professor of Psychiatry in the CBTDBT Clinic. My interests in psychology and performance formally came together when I became a Certified Mental Performance Consultant through the Association for Applied Sport Psychology. This specialization led to my inclusion in the United States Olympic & Paralympic Committee Mental Health Registry. Outside of work, I stay active primarily through cross-country skiing, mountain biking, open-water swimming, and sailing, and I enjoy time with my family in California and Norway.