Vedat Şar received his medical degree in Istanbul University Istanbul Faculty of Medicine in 1981. He finished residency training in Hacettepe University Medical Faculty Hospital (Ankara) between 1981 and 1986. Following state service at Forensic and Military Hospitals in Istanbul (1986-1989), Dr.Şar was appointed to Istanbul University Department of Psychiatry in 1989, to serve as an associate professor (1990-1996) and full professor (1996-2014) afterwards. Dr.Sar founded the Clinical Psychotherapy Unit (1993) and the Dissociative Disorders Program (1994) in the same department. As a coutrywide reference center, these entities served for treatment of thousands of trauma patients (both as inpatient as well as outpatient) under his directorship over two decades. Prof. Şar is a faculty member and Chair of Department of Psychiatry in Koç University School of Medicine currently. He serves as a consultant psychiatrist in VKV American Hospital and Koç University Hospital in Istanbul. He is also in private practice.
Beside general psychiatric service, Dr.Sar has trained medical students, interns, and psychiatry residents on trauma-related disorders and dissociation throughout two decades. He led numerious doctoral dissertations in psychiatry and forensic medicine, conducted several research projects, and supervised treatment of a large number of inpatients and outpatients.
Prof. Şar integrates dynamic psychotherapy with experiences and theoretical considerations derived from trauma-related conditions and dissociative disorders in his clinical practice. Having studied with a pupil of Erik Erikson in his early career, Prof.Şar has maintained his interest in various aspects of identity and its crises. He integrated his insight into the psychoanalitic self-psychology and his simultaneously developing work on childhood trauma and dissociation with his long-term experience with identity issues in 1990’ies. Hence, Prof.Şar represents a tradition which puts self-identity at the center of all theory and tries to be informed in clinical aspects of the still vague area between individual and society. He is a certified and practicing EMDR therapist since 1999.
Dr.Şar has published more than two hundred papers in peer-reviewed journals, book chapters, special journal issues in Turkish, English,or German. Professor Şar was President of the International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation (ISSTD) for 2007-2008. A member of ISSTD since 1995 (later to be a fellow member), he received the David Caul Memorial Award (twice in 1995 and 1999), the Morton Prince Scientific Achievement Award(twice in 2001 and 2010), the Cornelia Wilbur Award (2004) and President’s Award (2010, 2013, and 2021) presented by this Society. He served as International Director and board member of ISSTD between 1999-2002. Prof.Sar sits in the editorial boards of Journal of Trauma and Dissociation and European Journal of Psychotraumatology. He served as co-chair of the DSM-5 Research Planning Conferences on Dissociative Disorders of the ISSTD for five years (2003-2008) and also as an official advisor to DSM-5 Task Force of the American Psychiatric Association (2009-2012). He was co-chair of the ISSTD DSM-5 Research Planning Conferences for five years. He was founding Chair of the Scientific Committee of ISSTD between 2012 and 2021. Being a founding member of the European Society for Trauma and Dissociation (ESTD), he has also served as President of the European Society for Traumatic Stress Studies (ESTSS) between 2013-2015.
Beyond numerous plenaries and workshops in Turkey, Prof. Şar has also presented in USA, Canada, Australia, the Netherlands, UK, Germany, Spain, and Switzerland.
Dr.Şar is married and has one child. He speaks Turkish, German and English.
