My Approach

I pursued psychoanalysis as a career because I subscribe to its mission, which is to be passionately interested in the nuances of human needs, longings, and pain. Psychoanalytic training is rigorously focused on listening to experiences that are painful, and difficult to bear.  These are the experiences that are so often responded to, within ourselves and by others, with distraction, confusion, and hurried busyness that blocks the important centering experience of insight.  That is why it is so important that these experiences are communicated and heard. At moments of insight, patients tend to know what they need, what they want, and how to act.  My focus is on working with you to reach insight, and to understanding what stands in the way of it.

The therapy relationship is the vehicle through which the benefits of psychotherapy are attained.  Psychotherapy “technique” is ultimately about creating an atmosphere that promotes curiosity, honesty, empathy and courage- in both my patients and myself.  When this occurs new discoveries are made, growth happens, and new possibilities and fullfillment becomes more within reach.  This can sound simple, but it is often quite complicated when we look more closely and honestly at experience.  This is usually one of the first discoveries within psychoanalytic psychotherapy.