Aline LaPierre, PsyD, MFT, SEP, is the developer of NeuroAffective Touch™, a therapeutic approach that speaks the language of the body, yet invites the mind as an active partner. She has been exploring the movement patterns that organize the body and mind since the mid-1970s and conducts workshops that support the personal embodiment of somatic, developmental, and psychodynamic principles for psychotherapeutic professionals. She was on the faculty of the somatic doctoral program at Santa Barbara Graduate Institute for ten years and currently chairs doctoral dissertations in the somatic program at the Chicago School of Psychology. Dr. LaPierre has authored numerous articles published in peer-reviewed somatic journals and is co-author of the book Healing Developmental Trauma (North Atlantic, 2012).

She is trained as a psychoanalyst, has studied many bodywork and body-psychotherapy systems, and was a member of Dr. Allan Schore’s Affective Neuroscience study group for three years. In private practice in West Los Angeles, she specializes in the synergistic integration of psychodynamic and body-centered approaches.