David B. Wexler

David B. Wexler, Ph.D., is a clinical psychologist in private practice in San Diego, specializing in the treatment of relationships in conflict. He is the Executive Director of the non-profit Relationship Training Institute, which provides education and treatment internationally for relationship development and the prevention and treatment of relationship violence. He has also served as the Clinical and Administrative Supervisor for the NIMH-sponsored research study of domestic violence in the Navy from 1991 through 1996, and again from 2001 through 2006. Dr. Wexler is the author of When Good Men Behave Badly: Change Your Behavior Change Your Relationship (2004), and Is He Depressed or What? What to Do When the Man You Love is Moody, Irritable, and Withdrawn (2006). Men In Therapy: New Approaches for Effective Treatment (2009), was released in 2009. Dr. Wexler has been featured on the Dr. Phil show and the TODAY show, in the Wall St. Journal, Washington Post, “O” magazine, Cosmopolitan, Redbook, Men’s Health, and on hundreds of radio and TV programs throughout North America to help educate the public about relationships in conflict and how to resolve them. Psychotherapy Networker devoted an entire issue to issues of men in therapy in May/June 2010 built around Dr. Wexler’s feature article. Dr. Wexler has authored an internationally-recognized domestic violence treatment manual: the newly revised and updated The STOP Program—Fourth Edition, released by W.W. Norton in March 2020. More than 60,000 domestic violence offenders have now been treated in the STOP Program. Dr. Wexler has trained thousands of community professionals, military personnel, and law enforcement officials through extensive training seminars on The STOP Program model throughout the world. He has also recently published the ground-breaking STOP Program: For Women Who Abuse (Norton, 2016). He is also the former Chairman of the Treatment & Intervention Committee of the San Diego Domestic Violence Council and has been awarded the Distinguished Service Award for Treatment by this Council. The California Psychological Association has also designated Dr. Wexler as a Master Lecturer and he received CPA’s Distinguished Contribution to Psychology award. Dr. Wexler also received the prestigious award of Practitioner of the Year from the Society for the Psychological Study of Men and Masculinity, a division of the American Psychological Association. Dr. Wexler’s newest book (with co-author Holly Sweet, Ph.D.) is Counseling in the #MeToo Era: Helping Men Wake Up and Women Speak Up and will be released by W.W. Norton in late 2020. The U.S. Navy contracted with Dr. Wexler to design an innovative intervention program for the prevention of date and acquaintance rape. TRUE CONSENT: Sexual Assault Awareness Training for Men was administered to 50,000 incoming Navy recruits annually at Great Lakes Naval Training Center as part of a four-year research study on prevention of sexual violence in the Navy. Dr. Wexler has also consulted in hundreds of forensic cases and testified as an expert witness in over 50 cases in which the understanding of domestic violence offender characteristics, domestic violence patterns in relationships, PTSD, issues involving traumatic bonding, and battered women’s syndrome (now known as “intimate partner battering and its effects”) can help the Court clarify the complex legal issues. He has testified extensively for both Prosecution and Defense, in both criminal trials and civil cases, and in both military and civilian courts. To contact Dr. Wexler or other RTI faculty about professional training or consultation, please go to the RTI website at www.RTIprojects.org or contact him directly at dbwexler@gmail.com.