About Dr. Vince Berger
Vincent F. Berger, Ph.D., ABPP, ABFP
I (Dr. Berger) and my staff can help you if you are planning to raise and parent your baby or thinking of placing your child for adoption. We will help, and there is never any cost or obligation to you.
Since you have come to this page, let me tell you a little about myself. I am a Ph.D. psychologist, therapist, counselor, life-coach, creator and Director of a unique birthparent focused adoption program, and a devoted father and now grandfather.
To me, the most important thing about myself is that I am caring and concerned about others. My training, credentials and experience as a psychologist, coach, therapist, and adoption specialist gives me the skills I need to help others.
My childhood was filled with successes and failures like most of us have had. After I attended university and graduate school my life as an adult began. That was in 1968 when, at the young age of 24, I earned my doctorate in psychology and started teaching at the University of Pittsburgh. While I enjoyed teaching and was reportedly good at it, I did not feel I was doing enough to really help others.
So, while I was teaching, I started a private practice and worked in the public school system where I specialized in helping pregnant teens. In those days, there was very little help for these young women and many schools even forced pregnant girls to leave school because they were pregnant. I was shocked, and very upset, by how little help there was for these pregnant girls.
I found that helping these girls and others directly was much more rewarding, not financially but to me personally, than teaching. So, I stopped teaching so I could devote myself full time to helping others. I started a private counseling practice and also worked for the state in helping persons with mental illness. A few years later, I was driving along a beautiful river having a conversation with a friend who had adoption experience. He told me of the many problems pregnant women and adopting families were still facing in finding honest and good help.
I thought about our conversation, and I put my experience helping, and caring for, pregnant teens and young women together. That’s when I decided I would create a very different, birth parent and child centered, agency. It wasn’t easy to begin, and took over two years of effort. In 1985 I was finally approved to operate our fully licensed, not-for profit, birthparent focused agency. I was committed to helping pregnant women and their partners, whether they wanted to raise their child or develop an adoption plan. Either way, I wanted to provide the personalized care that pregnant women and their partners need and deserve.
It was with that desire and effort that I found out what I wanted to do with the rest of my life: to help those women and men and families who want to be involved in adoption. I have now been helping others in the adoption process for over 4 decades and still love helping others. It takes a great deal of time and energy, but since I find so much joy and strength in helping others, I find it all very rewarding.
Along the path of life, while doing the above, I had a personal life filled with two beautiful daughters. Both of whom are parents, and both now work in the helping professions. I am also blessed with 7 wonderful grandchildren.
I have had wonderful opportunities to travel around the world including the backwoods, glaciers, and mountains of New Zealand, the base camp at Mt. Everest, and to climb to the peak of Mt. Kilimanjaro, 19,500 feet above the plains of Africa. I mention these journeys since they have often required what I preach, teach, and practice –to be dedicated, have a strong desire and will to reach a goal, and to begin each journey and goal “one step at a time” until the goal is reached.
The fact that you have read this far suggests you are on your own “journey” to find out what is best you and your child. I know you may be nervous or unsure about taking this step and reaching out for help. I personally and professionally know how difficult the few first steps can be asking for help and when personal change is involved. I have been able to achieve much personally and professionally and to help others do the same. I hope you will trust me enough to let me help you.
Thanks for taking the time to read the above and letting me share a little of my personal and professional life and the pride I have in both.
Please feel free to contact me by email vince@adoptionservices.org or give me a call toll- free at 1(800)943-0400.
Credentials and Qualifications