Psychology of Willpower

Dr. Rebecca Fortgang is a faculty member in Harvard Medical School and a researcher in Massachusetts General Hospital's Department of Psychiatry, as well as a research associate in Harvard University's Department of Psychology. She is a clinical psychologist and clinical scientist and teaches in Harvard Extension School. Her research focuses on serious mental illness and self-control, with focuses on psychotic disorders and suicide. She completed her graduate degree in clinical psychology at Yale University where she studied self-control and effort in psychotic disorders. She completed her doctoral internship at Yale School of Medicine's Clinical and Community Psychology program. Prior to graduate training, she received her BA in linguistics from Cornell University in 2009 and she was a research fellow at the Clinical Brain Disorders Branch of the National Institute of Mental Health in Bethesda, Maryland.