is a licensed clinical psychologist trained in psychoanalysis and psychological assessment, and the founder of Tide Pools, a group psychology practice in Oakland, California. He has spent nearly fifteen years working at the intersection of psychoanalysis, psychological assessment, and the clinical care of neurodivergent, queer, and transgender patients.
His work has been shaped by two persistent questions: what does assessment owe the person receiving it, and what comes after diagnosis? His debut book, Farewell Diagnosis: Diffracting Psychoanalysis, Autism, and Assessment (Bloomsbury, 2026), pursues those questions across psychoanalytic theory, feminist science studies, and the lived reality of clinical practice.
He writes as a practitioner-scholar. Rather than an academic analysis performed at a distance, his writing is informed by direct experience with patients, and by the belief that clinical work and thinking sharpen one another.
Ben Morsa
A way of paying attention
HOW HE WORKS
The negative space
He looks for unexamined assumptions, questions that are not being asked, and conflicts that have gone unnamed. Like the background of a picture, this negative space helps us understand what we are studying more fully.
The translator
He has a knack for translating technical and theoretical knowledge into precise metaphors and experience-near language, making complex ideas usable without neutering or commercializing them.
A third space
In polarized debates, he cultivates a third space, one that holds the tension of an argument without resolving or foreclosing it prematurely. This makes room for more nuanced consideration.
THE PRACTICE
Tide Pools
Tide Pools, a psychological corporation, is a group practice in Oakland founded on the conviction that enduring change takes time, curiosity, and investment. Whether in therapy or assessment, the practice moves beyond categorization and rote medicalization toward relationships that help patients engage the deepest parts of their experience. It is also a community of thought and critique: each clinician writes and contributes to the field.
Credentials & affiliations
TITLE
Licensed Clinical Psychologist
FOUNDER
Tide Pools, a psychological corporation, Oakland, CA
TRAINING
Psychoanalysis and psychological assessment
AWARD
R-PAS Society Teaching and Mentorship Award (2023)
MEMBER
Division 39, American Psychological Association; Collaborative Assessors’ Association of the Bay Area