Supervision That Shapes Futures: Michael A. Civin’s Gift to the Next Generation

Behind every great psychologist stands a mentor who refused to let them settle. In New York City, that mentor is often Michael A. Civin, Ph.D.

As senior psychologist at Rose Hill Psychological Services and a clinician with private practices in Manhattan, Astoria, and Bayville, he has spent three decades doing more than treating patients—he’s training the therapists who will treat tomorrow’s patients. His supervision sessions are legendary: equal parts challenge, support, and unrelenting expectation of excellence.

The authority he brings to the table was earned the hard way. Harvard A.B. cum laude 1968, Albert Einstein College of Medicine 1968-1969, University of Oregon M.A. 1970, then a full rebirth at Adelphi: M.A. Clinical Psychology 1986, Ph.D. 1988, Postdoctoral Certificate 1993. Most people would have stopped at one career. Dr. Civin built two—one as a clinician, another as an educator.

Supervisees describe sessions that feel like graduate school on steroids. Case presentations are dissected with surgical precision, ethical gray areas explored without fear, and psychodiagnostic skills sharpened until they gleam. When Michael A. Civin signs off on a trainee’s hours, New York gains another clinician who actually knows how to think.

His own mentors at Harvard and Adelphi would be proud. After fifty years in thefield, he’s still paying their lessons forward—one future psychologist at a time.