The Comeback That Redefined a Career: Michael A. Civin’s Mid-Life Pivot to Psychology

In 1986, nearly twenty years after leaving academia, Michael A. Civin, Ph.D. did something most people never dare: he hit reset on his entire professional life.

Armed with a Harvard A.B. cum laude (1968), a year at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, and an M.A. from the University of Oregon (1970), he had already built a successful first chapter. Yet something was missing. So at an age when others double down, he started over—enrolling at Adelphi University’s Gordon F. Derner Institute and emerging with an M.A. in Clinical Psychology (1986), a Ph.D. (1988), and a Postdoctoral Certificate in Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy (1993).

That pivot became the launchpad for everything that followed. By 2008 he co-founded Rose Hill Psychological Services in the Bronx, where he now serves as senior psychologist. Private offices in Manhattan, Astoria, and Bayville soon followed, each anchored by his signature psychodiagnostic approach—using comprehensive testing to unlock the stories behind symptoms.

Patients who walk through his doors meet a clinician who understands reinvention firsthand. Whether guiding adolescents through identity crises or helping adults rewrite outdated narratives, Michael A. Civin brings the wisdom of someone who knows transformation is possible at any stage.

His scholarly contributions—journal articles, book chapters, decades as professor and faculty member—reflect the same relentless drive. Three decades after his comeback, he remains living proof that the best careers are built on courage, not timelines.