Michael Zimmerman received his BA from Columbia College and his MA and PhD from Columbia University. He has been practicing psychoanalysis for over 20 years in Berkeley after receiving his psychoanalytic training from the San Francisco Center of Psychoanalysis (formerly the San Francisco Psychoanalytic Institute). Simultaneously, he taught modern English literature at the University of California at Berkeley and at San Francisco State University where he is an emeritus professor of English. Currently, he is professor of English at the Fromm Institute for Lifelong Learning at the University of San Francisco. In Tyrants of the Heart, he has enjoyed synthesizing his life-long interest in James Joyce, whose work he has taught extensively, and his fascination with the various kinds of psychoanalysis being practiced today.
