David Klugman was born on February 20th, 1959. He began his career as a writer, earning degress in literature from Bennington College, and Creative Writing at Johns Hopkins. While studying for his Ph. D. at Rice University in the early 1980s, David realized that in order to write the way he wanted to write he needed to break out of the university structure of academia and put himself more directly in contact with everyday life and everyday needs. It was during this period that David began to realize a slow growing synthesis between his long interest in psychology, literary Romanticism and abstract art. He decided to go back to school, where he earned an MSW at Columbia University, and a certificate in Psychosynthesis Counseling from the Synthesis Center in Amherst, MA. Shortly thereafter, David began teaching publicly and working privately as a psychotherapist, eventually establishing a successful independent practice (which he still runs) in Nyack, NY. A few years following, and sensing he still needed something more in order to put all the pieces of his particular  puzzle together, David entered a 5 year course of training for psychoanalysis at the Institute for the Psychoanalytic Study of Subjectivity, between 1995 and 2000. It was during this time, and primarily as a result of his deep friendship and work with Dr. George Atwood, that David’s various ideas began to gel with actual practice. By 2003, David had published more than half a dozen peer reviewed articles in national and international journals, as well as presenting at local, national and international forums and conferences. In those presentations and articles, David found ways to link all the basic ingredients of his interests together into a single string of theories or ideas: Romanticism, Imagination, healing through psychoanalytic psychotherapy, and finally the role of abstract art in what he has come to refer to as “The Feeling Life.”

Alongside his training as a writer and psychoanalyst, David also pursued a three-decade long collaboration with the fine artist Robert Strang, a friend and colleague he met while attending Bennington College in 1977. One result of their years of work together was a dense, manifesto-like book entitled, Living Abstractly: Art and Imagination in Daily Life, first published in 2001 by Self Publications. Presently, in fact, David and Robert give regular, free lectures to the public based on that book (mainly through galleries and the public library system); lectures which are intended to ignite interest in their ideas about feeling experience through the perception of abstract art.

David began writing his current book in the early 1990s alongside his social work, psychosynthesis and psychoanalytic trainings. More than the specialized writing he continues to develop with Robert, and the scholarly articles he publishes in local, national and international journals, it was always through this book that David felt he would reach and speak to a wider audience.  

After several frustrating attempts with established publishing houses, David began collaborating with his brother, Adam, in 2004. And it was Adam, with experience in politics, marketing and video, who finally convinced David that the only way to assure that his message get out the way he wanted it to get out, was to do the work necessary in order to put it out there himself. This conviction inspired David to develop a website (TheFeelingLife.com), and to self-publish The Feeling Life: Reclaiming your emotional vitality and purpose, which is available NOW for purchase on this site (go to the Feeling Store to buy this book, and to view other items for sale on this site).