His research interests include literature and psychoanalysis, trauma theory, love and loss, death education, and self-disclosure pedagogy.
[6] Berman's research works span the fields of literature and psychoanalysis, with a particular focus on the pedagogy of self-disclosure, suicide, trauma, grief, love, and loss, as well as the twentieth century novels.
[9] Berman also investigated if literature could work as a trigger and if a student's identification with a sick or dying character in a story is so strong that it jeopardizes his or her health.
According to his research, teachers need to develop a responsible pedagogy of risk that is aimed at enabling students to deal with distressing or shameful subjects while keeping them from being anxious, depressed, or suicidal.
[12] Berman addressed the literary and cultural analysis of caregiving in the arts in his writings by focusing on fictional stories like The Death of Ivan Ilyich by Leo Tolstoy, and memoirs such as Mary Gordon's Circling My Mother, and Ending Ageism.
In a Times Union interview, he stated that "artistic works of film and literature can often take you to dark places and really show what caregivers are thinking and feeling".
[5] His research shows that psychoanalysis can not only aid in our comprehension and management of difficult situations, but it also teaches us that we are accountable for our actions and not our ideas or dreams.
Furthermore, his work, which draws on psychoanalysis, indicated that the memoirists not only paid tribute to their spouses' memories, but also dealt with the terrible feelings associated with losing the person who meant the most to them with writing.