My primary service is psychodynamic counseling, informed by several interdisciplinary perspectives and approaches (i.e. psychology, social work, psychoanalysis, family therapy and cognitive behavioral therapy). Such counseling is advanced by unique, on-going conversations that expand existing skills and develop new aptitudes for emotional and psychological wellbeing. Investment in this process is always a collaborative endeavor; one where I partner with clients to facilitate those changes being pursued. I believe clients arrive with existing skills and abilities, even though they are not always apparent. Part of our work will focus on locating these capacities and encouraging additional growth and development. As such, the collaboration is always aimed at enhancing and expanding that which already exists in addition to building new aptitudes. While such work requires commitment, it is uniquely valuable since abilities developed in this effort can produce beneficial results in many aspects of life.

My clinical perspective is further distinguished by its focus on different client constellations (individuals, couples and families) as well as the provision of psychoanalysis.

Individuals

In working with individuals, my counseling is primarily focused on the psychological and emotional territory of the client’s experience. Here the primary imperative is to explore and better understand the present and historical patterns of psychological and emotional processes.  As such dimensions of existence inform and affect all lived experiences, the knowledge and awareness is particularly valuable for individuals exploring alternative means of responding to difficult lived circumstances.

Couples

In working with couples much of the above perspective is also relevant since successful couples typically possess a shared language for communicating on matters of psychological or emotional experience. When working with couples, I understand myself as employed by the couple, rather than either of the two individuals involved.  In this domain, the work focuses primarily on the interpersonal dimensions of psychological and emotional existence rather than personal.  Success in couples work is achieved by developing fuller, more detailed understandings of how the two-part system (the couple) operates and functions.  This expanded knowledge and awareness is uniquely valuable for the sustainability of intimate relationships.

Families

Family work also prioritizes interpersonal dimensions of psychological and emotional material.  Like couples, families are unique systems of psychological and emotional expression and communication; yet, operations and exchanges in such systems often become invisible to its members.  Such limitations in awareness and insight are often at the expense of the family’s health and wellbeing.  In focusing on these invisible processes as well as the structural dimensions of communication, families and individual members can experience significant benefit in their functioning and wellbeing.  Further, the family approach is particularly suited to young children experiencing difficulties.  In such circumstances, children benefit from the lateral support of the broader family, which helps to digest and internalized new approaches to habituated responses.

Psychoanalysis:

Psychoanalysis brings the unconscious meaning of residues of personal experience to the fore, and demonstrates how these unconscious factors affect current relationships and patterns of behavior. In order to help master these influences, psychoanalysis traces them back to their historical origins. This permits people to see how these residues have changed and developed over time, thereby offering the potential to deal more constructively with their appearance in current life.

Analysis is an intimate partnership. The bonds created in the course of treatment create a safe environment for self-revelation. Through exploring the bonds of the partnership formed in treatment, not only do people become aware of unconscious meanings, but the bonds themselves can reveal important ways in which difficulties can repeat themselves. The experience with the analyst is not simply intellectual, but is emotional and spans the range of human expressivity.

Continuity in treatment is essential to developing the closeness and intimacy required for this form of self-exploration. Typically, meetings with the analyst take place three or four times a week. Patients lie on a couch so that they can better attend to their internal processes. They set their own pace and their own agenda for the treatment by saying everything that comes to mind, to the best of their ability.

The conditions of psychoanalytic treatment create a unique setting that allows aspects of the mind to emerge that are inaccessible to other methods of observation. As the patient speaks, hints of the unconscious sources of current difficulties gradually begin to make themselves clear through repetitive patterns of behavior, in the subjects that the patient finds hard to talk about, and in the ways the person relates to the analyst.

The analyst helps by tending to the evolution of the therapeutic bond. This allows the analyst to make meaningful reflections on the person’s difficulties. With these reflections, the person can refine, correct, reject, and further modify thoughts and feelings. During the years that an analysis takes place, the patient wrestles with these insights, going over them again and again with the analyst, and noting their influence on present experience in daily life, in fantasies, and in dreams. Through a joint effort with the analyst, the person gradually gains mastery over crippling life patterns, or over incapacitating symptoms. This newfound mastery also helps to expand the freedom to work and to love. Over the course of time, the person’s life—his or her behavior, relationships, and sense of self—changes in deep and abiding ways.