DR. BERNARD GLAZMAN

Dr. Bernard Glazman was a Toronto psychoanalyst who spent more than fifty years quietly practicing a form of analysis rooted in the work of Edmund Bergler. The sign on his desk, D.P. & D.B.P, reminded all of us, "Don't provoke and don't be provoked," which was the foundation of Bernie's interpretation of the Berglerian thought.

Bernie was not famous, did not build a public brand, and never turned his method into a school. He worked from a small home office, patient by patient, helping people understand how they unconsciously created conflict, provoked suffering, and repeated the same destructive patterns while believing life was simply happening to them. To those who worked with him seriously, Glazman was not just a therapist. He was a lifeline.

I first came to Glazman at the height of my own neurosis. I did not understand how much suffering I was creating for myself or for the people around me. Over more than a decade of therapy, mentorship, and study, he taught me how to investigate my own conflicts, how to recognize the unconscious setups behind them, and how to stop hiding behind the official story I told myself. 

Dr. Glazman introduced me to Edmund Bergler’s work, interpreted it through his own clinical experience, and helped me understand the core lesson that now runs through all of my coaching: we are not passive victims of conflict. We are often participants in creating it.

This was a picture of Bergler on Glazman's wall.

During the last years of his life, I documented Glazman’s work extensively, recording sessions, preserving his language, studying Bergler with him, and eventually helping bring people to his practice who were willing to do the difficult work he demanded. 

With his encouragement, I began teaching workshops and later developed my own coaching practice, translating the lessons I learned from him into a practical framework for helping others examine their conflicts. 

This website and my coaching work are my attempt to preserve what was most valuable in Glazman’s interpretations of Bergler: the insistence that we look beneath the surface, take responsibility for our role in suffering, and learn to recognize the unconscious playbook before it ruins our relationships.

Glazman was not just my doctor and psychoanalyst; he was my mentor and, most of all, as he continually reminded me after years of being his patient, my friend. Bernie recognized my passion for Bergler's work and encouraged me to start teaching it to others. 

Glazman was one of the last living links to Bergler’s forgotten psychoanalytic work, and when he died, that lineage nearly died with him. I'm one of the few teachers left actively applying Berglerian methods to help people understand the unconscious machinery behind their conflict, suffering, and self-sabotage. 

This website and my coaching practice are my way of keeping those teachings alive, practical, and available, before they vanish completely.