SERVICES

Psychotherapy

I offer personalized psychotherapy to adults and seniors looking for help with a wide spectrum of needs – self-exploration, urgent personal challenges, and serious mental illness. I specialize in the management of life changes (and their related issues) and overcoming the effects of trauma. Fundamental to my mode of therapy is the importance of the relationship between the patient and therapist.

Therapy with me is focused on identifying patterns that keep creating problems for you; patterns of thinking, feeling, responding to and forming relationships with others. We work on how to separate then-and-there from here-and-now. The therapy relationship itself becomes a “slice of life” in which these patterns play out within the safe environment of the therapy space. This provides you with opportunities to recognize the patterns, explore the underlying issues, and create new, more helpful ways of being. I’m not interested in providing you with hollow platitudes. Rather, I strive to partner with you to manage the present problems and to dig deeply within yourself to resolve issues at their source.

My experience includes treating Major Depression, Anxiety, Bipolar Disorder, PTSD and trauma-related Disorders, Dissociative Disorders, and Personality Disorders such as Narcissistic Personality Disorder and Borderline Personality Disorder. I have worked with patients experiencing Schizophrenia and worked with their families. While I do not specialize in LGBTQ issues, I have worked closely with and formed helpful therapeutic connections with patients coping with issues related to their LGBTQ status.

My therapy style is typical of the psychoanalytic/psychodynamic treatment mode. Guidance from other modes of psychotherapy, such as CBT, DBT, ACT, and Behavioral Therapy, are used when they are helpful and appropriate. Psychodynamic-Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy is evidence-based and supported by voluminous research.

Psychological Assessment

I use a variety of established psychological tests to identify a person’s self-concept, typical ways of thinking and feeling, and typical ways of being with others. You could call them “personality tests.” For Pre-surgery Psychological Screening, I use an empirically-supported battery of tests and questionnaires designed to support the best possible outcomes of spinal and pain-management medical procedures.

The purpose of all of these kinds of tests and screens is to guide treatment, assess a person’s limits of ability and capacity, identify problematic patterns, and serve as a companion to psychotherapy. These tests and screens highlight critical areas for your personal growth, impediments to goal attainment, and, as part of treatment and treatment planning, help promote improved quality of living.

My core personality assessment battery is a combination of self-report and so-called “stimulus attribution” tests (that is, “objective” and “projective” tests). The personality assessment battery is comprised of the Personality Assessment Inventory, 2nd edition (PAI) or Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory, 2nd edition (MMPI-2), the Rorschach Inkblot Method (using the Rorschach Performance Assessment System, R-PAS), and Thematic Apperception Test (TAT). These tests are among the tests most frequently used by psychologists and, in combination, provide a unique, cross-referenced, in-depth assessment of patient’s personality, thought processes, emotional attributes, capacity for coping, and the patient’s ways of understanding the world around them.

In addition to the personality assessment battery, I use a wide variety of personality measures (including the MMPI-2), screening questionnaires, and brief assessment instruments, including intelligence assessment, for Pre-surgery Psychological Screening, and to assess mental status, capacities, and strengths/limitations of patients as part of overall treatment.