About My Practice
The Initial Consultations
Our work will start with 2 to 3 collaborative consultations to assess where you are at in your life, how you got to this place and what goals can be established for realistic change. At the end of the consultation phase, I will review with you our mutually agreed upon conceptualization of your suffering and outline the various options of addressing your concerns. These may include recommendations for individual, couple, family or group psychotherapy, medication management, and/or other adjunctive treatments. You will have an opportunity to assess how comfortable you feel talking with me and whether or not you would like to continue your journey with my collaboration, or if you would like to seek out another opinion and therapist. You may also decide the time is not right for you to embark on this type of healing journey at the present.
The Psychotherapy Process
What is psychotherapy like? There are many schools of psychotherapy and many ways to approach the concerns you bring to treatment. Although I have training in and am able to provide various types of therapeutic interventions, the underpinning of my way of working with you is psychodynamic psychotherapy. This means that in therapy we will be guided by the wisdom of what you bring/share and by our interactions in the therapy sessions. The therapy encounter will enable us to experience and understand the often unconscious meanings and functions of your thoughts and behaviors. This type of psychotherapy is usually longer and more challenging for participants, and I believe that, in general, individuals find the changes that occur take a deep hold.
Frequency and Duration of Therapy
These are established based upon your own unique concerns and desires, along with my professional knowledge of what is needed to reach the goals we agree upon in the consultation phase of our work. In general, people come at least once weekly.
Psychoanalysis
Psychoanalysis is an intensive form of long-term treatment in which use is made of the patient's stream of conscious thoughts and experiences during sessions to bring about fundamental change. Because of the depth and quality of change that analysis aims to achieve, individuals attend analysis 4 or 5 times weekly, usually over a number of years. As a candidate in psychoanalytic training, I am able to offer psychoanalysis to a limited number of individuals.