Dr. Lipke is clinical psychologist in part-time practice limited to veterans, first responders and medical providers. Along with counseling, through Core Psychotherapy Center, he offers consultation to psychotherapists as well as presentations on a variety of subjects to mental health professionals and organizations. Titles include:

The HEArt Program for the Prevention of Destructive Anger

Forgiveness, Pros and Cons

The Effects of Combat Exposure

Understanding Psychological Trauma Through Literature

Therapist Self-Disclosure

Psychotherapy Integration

EMDR Demystified

Approach to Counseling

Dr. Lipke has developed a model for conceptually integrating the various approaches to psychotherapy and uses this to offer counseling methods most helpful to the goals clients bring to the effort. His practice has been heavily influenced by

– his early training in behavior therapy which was a focus of his Masters thesis and PhD dissertation from St Louis University,

– existential psychotherapy (in internship training with Irv Yalom)

– EMDR, with which he worked closely with Francine Shapiro starting 1990, and became the first person she authorized to independently provide EMDR training to others.

Professional Experience

Dr. Lipke worked for many years at the North Chicago VA Medical Center (now Lovell Federal Health Care Center). Prior to his retirement from NCVAMC in 2009 he held several positions including the director of an inpatient PTSD program for seven years and the team leader of the outpatient PTSD psychotherapy program for three years. While at Lovell he also treated clients in a residential substance abuse and acute psychiatry programs, provided EAP services, taught interns and psychiatric residents, and provided critical incident psychological services. Prior to his work at the VA he was for one year the director of a county community mental health center in Ohio.

Throughout his career he has taught at the undergraduate and graduate levels at several colleges and universities, including St. Louis University, Rosalind Franklin University of Health Sciences, Webster University and several community colleges. He has also taught and continues to teach (especially EMDR) in psychotherapy in workshops, nationally and internationally.

Dr. Lipke has also provided voluntary services including:

– teaching trauma psychotherapy to Bangladesh’s mental health professionals for UNICEF

– volunteer community service after natural disasters and terrorist attacks such as, the Oklahoma City bombing, the 9/11 attack.

– after retirement, continuing with anger prevention work for veterans at Lovell VAMC

– counseling with Kosovo refugees in Germany

– teaching and consultation to the National Psychology Association of Ukraine

Publications and Scientific/Professional Presentations

He is the author of: Don’t I Have the Right to Be Angry?: The Heart Program for Veterans and Others Who Want to Prevent Destructive Anger and EMDR and Psychotherapy Integration. He has published many papers in professional and scientific journals and often presented at clinical and scientific conferences, including invited addresses at the American Psychological Association annual convention, EMDR International Association annual meeting, American Association for the Study of Mental Imagery Annual Conference.

Dr. Lipke is a contributing editor to StressPoints the newsletter of the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies, in which he co-edits a column on trauma and literature. He is on the editorial board of the Journal of EMDR Practice and Research (JEMDR). He is a peer reviewer for JEMDR and the journal Psychological Trauma

Resources for veterans, clinician, and the general public can be found at HowardLipke.com.