Dr. Hamer is an Oakland psychologist and psychoanalyst who teaches at the San Francisco Center for Psychoanalysis and the Northern California Society for Psychoanalytic Psychology. The author of three books of poetry, he has also authored articles on race and psychoanalysis, one of which, “Guards at the Gate: Race, Resistance and Psychic Reality” won the 2000 Affiliate Council Prize from the American Psychoanalytic Association. He is a former lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley, in psychology and in the School of Social Welfare.

He is a member of the Holmes Commission on Racial Equality in American Psychoanalysis, and his poetry was most recently anthologized in African American Poetry: 250 Years of Struggle and Song (Library of America, 2020, K. Young, editor), and The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story, One World/Random House, 2021, N. Hannah-Jones, C. Roper, I. Silverman and J. Silverstein, editors).