About Therapy
The Clinical Psychology Degree
Clinical psychology presumes a rigorous training, leading to licensing. Some psychologists may not be clinical psychologists (e.g., counseling or educational psychologists), and some who hold doctorates (Ph.D.'s) may not be licensed as psychologists but as counselors. Being licensed as a clinical psychologist means you have undertaken hospital internships and post-doctoral training, have secured the required amount of supervision, and passed whatever national and state exams apply.
Seeking Therapy
Often, we are in predicaments where we are overwhelmed and don't understand why we are suffering, nor why we have been singled out for a particular fate. We turn to therapy demoralized, in possession perhaps of negative beliefs and fears about ourselves. These beliefs arise from trauma, whether direct and obvious, or more subtle (such as humiliation and shame).
Common reasons people try therapy with me are:
- loss or grief
- crisis in relationships
- mood disorders
- anxiety
- personality patterns
- sexual or gender issues including transgender
- eating disorders
- medical illness or reproductive failure
- compulsivity
- isolation
- hallucinogenic-assisted therapy
- attachment
How Therapy Works
I believe that we all have unconscious desires to master difficulties, and we have unrealized plans of how to overcome them. Since we are deeply social beings, when at an impasse, we try out those ideas in an experimental context we call therapy.
There, we use the emotional connection we carefully forge with the therapist, testing ourselves as well as the therapist.
Tolerating extraordinary circumstances as well as everyday difficulties with fewer symptoms is, of course, optimal. But the goal of treatment reaches further than that: ultimately we wish for a creative and meaningful involvement in our own lives, and even strive toward that. We have this capacity regardless of the pain and the limitations constraining us.
I pay particular attention to the shaping effects of class, gender, and ethnicity. I am interested in working with people of all races, ethnicities, and genders/sexualities.
For more about my approach, please turn to Experience and Method.