Overview

Dr. Piatigorsky provides high-performance athletes with Clinical Services for mental health and well-being, as well as Performance Consultation for athletic excellence and achievement.

These services are unified through his proprietary treatment and training system—Dialectical Sports Skills (DSS)—a holistic approach distinguished by its depth, breadth, practicality, and coherent structure.

Science

DSS is grounded in science, informed by Dr. Piatigorsky’s University of California experience across graduate school, clinical internship, postdoctoral fellowship, medical center work, research studies, and faculty roles. It is anchored in Cognitive and Dialectical Behavior Therapies, gold-standard treatments validated through rigorous clinical trials.

Dr. Piatigorsky collaborates closely with allied science-based disciplines such as psychiatry and sports medicine, integrating relevant skills into DSS.

Holism

Each client is a whole person—mind and body—situated within their unique biology, developmental history, sociocultural environment, and current reality. This stance embraces individual differences and recognizes multilayered problems that require comprehensive attention.

Personalized care or training plans consider stressors across performance demands, health status, diversity factors, family and friendships, team dynamics, academics, lifestyle, and more. Customized for each client, services are shaped by their unique constellation of such stressors.

Style

Dr. Piatigorsky’s professionalism embodies integrity, expertise, and unwavering commitment, conveyed with a warm, laid-back manner. Using dialectics, he balances empathy, validation, and unconditional positive regard with radical genuineness, clear direction, and steady resolve. He is attuned to the client in the moment and adjusts his approach accordingly.

Dr. Piatigorsky takes an active approach in session, teaching clients the nature of their problems, the skills they need, when to use them, how those skills work, and why they matter. This insight instills the self-efficacy necessary for effective skill use.

Valuing individual differences, Dr. Piatigorsky honors each client’s expertise in their own life and sport; he works with humility and curiosity. The work is collaborative, with feedback flowing both ways. Dr. Piatigorsky makes this process fun!

Research

Dr. Piatigorsky’s clinical and performance-consulting work is directly informed by his current research. Operationalizing DSS, he is the Principal Investigator of a prospective validation study of the Dialectical Performance Index–64 (DPI-64), a broad-band self-report measure of psychological performance capacities. The development and validation of this assessment instrument refine Dr. Piatigorsky’s treatment and training strategies, enhancing the precision and effectiveness of his services.