Susan Winship Coates PhD is an American Clinical Psychologist with an expertise in trauma.  She is a Clinical Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at Columbia University and is on the teaching faculty of the Columbia Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research.   Dr. Coates is currently the co-director with Dr. Michele Rosenberg of the Columbia Psychoanalytic Trauma Training Program.  

Dr. Coates with Dr. Daniel Schechter and Dr. Jane Rosenthal are authors of the book September 11: Trauma and Human Bonds.  This book is part of The Relational Perspectives Book Series that focuses on the role that human bonds play in the resilience and vulnerability to trauma. Dr. Coates and Dr. Schechter wrote a series of papers on the impact of September 11th on children that were translated into multiple languages. 

After the September 11th attacks Dr. Coates provided services to children and parents at the Family Assistance Center at Pier 94 in New York City.  In the 1980’s she was Director of Child Psychology training at St. Luke’s Roosevelt Hospital Center (now Mt. Sinai West) and the Childhood Gender Identity Service.  She is a member of the Board of the Margaret S Mahler Child Development Foundation whose aim is “to increase an understanding of a child’s psychological and emotional development.”  Dr. Coates is the author of over 75 papers published in professional journals on trauma, attachment and gender. 

Dr. Coates is the recipient of multiple awards including the 2012 Margaret S Mahler award for outstanding papers in child psychoanalysis, the 2015 George E. Daniels Award of Merit for “distinguished contribution to psychoanalysis from the Columbia Center for Psychoanalytic training and research,” the 2016 Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association Prize Award for “excellence in psychoanalytic scholarship and distinguished contributions to the journal.” In 2019 she received the John J Weber award for psychoanalytic research and in 2024 she was the recipient of the George Goldman award for “Distinguished achievement in Clinical psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic education” both from the Columbia Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research.

Dr. Coates is in private practice in New York City. She sees both children, adults and families.