Long-term Psychotherapy

My primary area of specialization in 35 years of practice is doing long-term depth psychotherapy with a wide range of people. I like working with all kinds of people, young, old, from various backgrounds, cultures and stages of transitions in their lives.  I generally work with people for a long time and many people return after a number of years to check-in or discuss new concerns.

I work from a relational Jungian perspective integrating other approaches as may be helpful. Much of what happens in therapy is about understanding you, exploring what matters to you and about helping you discover fulfillment and meaning in your life. I am flexible in terms of  how we work together, and although much of my practice is office-based, many of my people travel , and I work over the phone and online as the need arises.

Even though I am a believer in depth work, I am interactive and quite obviously engaged with you. I believe I provide a safe, empathic and nonjudgmental space where you are free to find and hear your own voice. I tend to see possibility when for one reason or another you can’t.

The ultimate goal is something Jung calls individuation, being who you were meant to be, both as an individual and in relationship. The philosophy section of this website will give you a more complete description of  of who I am and the experiences and values I bring to the therapy relationship but the following summary statements from that section provide the general idea.

Even though I enjoy many professional activities, my primary interest has always been and remains doing therapy. I have an extraverted attitude, apparently unusual for a Jungian, and the best fit, I’ve found, in my practice, is with people interested in long-term depth work who are engaged in finding meaning in their lives.

Central to me is an individual’s authority over his or her own life tempered with compassion for others and the recognition that there are many different ways of living an authentic life.

Therapy is about making a deep connection with another human being on a path of exploration and understanding about how best to live that life.

I really enjoy this work and find that laughter can be an important component of therapy.

Most likely due to my background, I am not particularly focused on pathology and instead strive to understand. I am deeply interested in the narrative and the connections in a story, both conscious and unconscious, and the overall arc that makes sense of and provides an anchoring point for a life.

I am comfortable with mystery and and can easily sit with the sometimes-long vicissitudes and repetitions of the psyche.

I like working with people’s strengths. I am in awe of the courage, love and commitment I witness everyday. I am daily blessed by the remarkable people in my practice.

Winnicott’s comment, which rang true to me when I first read it, captures the flavor of the process as I experience it. Winnicott writes “Psychotherapy is not making clever and apt interpretations; by and large it is a long-term giving back what the patient brings. It is a complex derivative of the face that reflects what is there to be seen… Even when our patients do not get cured, they are grateful to us for seeing them as they are, and this gives us satisfaction of a deep kind” (from Playing and Reality, p.158).