More About My Practice

I am the person who greets you when you enter my office: who sits with you, listens and talks with you, and asks questions. Whether you know me from previous or ongoing work together, or we are meeting for the very first time, you are seeking my care and help. Therefore it may be useful for me to convey something of my heart and mind as they relate to my work with you, the client.

I believe that whatever troubles you and your life cannot define the whole of you, nor should it categorize your psychological identity. Thereby, my guiding perception of you, the client, and of the complex life experience you bring to therapy, is never for a moment framed and fixed by concepts of psychopathology, disorder and one-dimensional clinical labels. Instead, I regard the whole of experiences you bring to therapy: those internal and external, those belonging to the past, to the present, and to the anticipated future, as elements fully and deeply connected to the common ground of our human condition. This is the area in which I work with my clients, in which we all share, and in which we sometimes struggle. It is a territory in which I fully include myself.

Whatever the concerns and the stressors present in your life; whatever their breadth and intensity, or the emotional discomfort they may engender: they have also provided an opportunity for you to seek and receive help. I therefore understand all aspects of your life and its challenges primarily as guideposts and resources, indispensable to the positive outcomes of a helping relationship. Read more

I abstain from a presumption of authority and certitude which can so readily accrue to a clinical orientation primarily derived from and sustained by concrete classifications and labels. Such an approach can often embrace and mobilize richly-descriptive terminologies and elaborate taxonomies as if they were capable, in and of themselves, of illuminating the complex reality and dilemmas of an individual’s psyche.

I focus instead on each individual’s experience of Self, that is, each person’s own sense of identity and place in the world, as we seek to understanding the meaning and directions of his/her life story. I view the Self as a central psychological clearinghouse: the realm in which all persons’ feelings and thoughts take on depth and meaning, and in which motivations are sorted out and behaviors largely determined. My approach is thus directed toward the discovery, understanding and rebalancing of my clients’ experience of themselves and others.

I approach this task through a carefully guided, collaborative exploration of complex dynamic interactions among all elements of the history and living present of their lives. This contributes to our understanding and acceptance of each individual’s innate, foundational characteristics, and of the entirety of his/her unique subjective experience within the framework of the original family, and in the physical/social environment in which the person has lived.

In this we often find that the strongest features of character and personality that have arisen from one’s life experience – those attributes and resources that are most distinct and have been truly valuable – can also, at times, be most among the most problematic. Resolving problems related to this paradox is often a matter primarily of finding and sustaining balance.

In all this, the power and wealth of my clients’ subjective experience in providing insight, direction and resolution could hardly be enhanced by compression and retrofitting into a pre-existing framework of clinical categorization and terminology of calculated design. I am entirely comfortable with the presence of some mystery and uncertainty, which are naturally present in the deep complexity of each individual’s life experience and sense of being. I believe that these elements are a touchstone for real discovery, release, and lasting, positive change in the lives of those I treat.