Barbara Hammer

For more than forty years, Dr. Barbara Hammer has been an outstanding psychotherapist, leader, educator, researcher, and champion of women’s rights, in addition to raising three children.  Born in Chicago, Illinois, Dr. Hammer attended Chicago public schools.  Upon graduation from high school, she received a Ford Foundation scholarship to the University of Chicago and completed her undergraduate education at Grinnell College in 1957. She received her Master's degree from Purdue University in 1958 and her Doctorate in Psychology from the University of Maryland in 1964, where she received the American Association of University Women award as the outstanding female graduate student at the university.  During her graduate years at Maryland, she worked on the first NASA effort to study the effects of extended voyages in space on human performance and received numerous fellowships.  

Dr. Hammer taught at Mount Vernon Junior College in Washington, D.C., where she lectured on Child Development and Marriage and the Family.  She also conducted and supervised the first therapy groups for women during the beginning stage of the Women’s Movement at the University of Maryland (1968-70).  She initiated a consultation program to extend the then new techniques of operant conditioning into the home and classroom for parent and teacher behavioral therapy and management.  Dr. Hammer also supervised the practicum training of graduate students in Clinical Psychology at George Washington University

In 1969, Dr. Hammer became one of the first female psychologists in the District of Columbia to open an office for the independent practice of Clinical Psychology.  She focused her practice primarily on women, family issues, and trauma resolution.  Dr Hammer also worked on Peer Review Committees in DC and Maryland, and served as President of the District of Columbia Psychological Association (1981).

Dr. Hammer continues her work on the forefront of the intersection of psychological practice and research to expand the boundaries of the human potential through brain wave biofeedback.