Psychoanalytic psychotherapy can help people with a variety of problems. Some people have specific symptoms of anxiety, depression, or other mood disturbance. Others struggle with self-esteem and with lack of confidence or success in personal relationships and careers. Still others identify personality traits or repetitive patterns of behavior that are troublesome to themselves or that interfere in their relationships with others. Some are confused about who they really are, and these struggles regarding personal identity may lead to a lack of a sense of meaning in their everyday lives. And there are those who are creative, pursuing writing or other creative arts, but who have not been able to reach their potential due to inhibitions in the creative process or to difficulty in identifying their true “voices.”

I approach all of my patients with the immediate concern for relieving troubling symptoms and resolving current life problems. In order to do so, attention is focused upon identifying the underlying emotional sources of these difficulties. Understanding the environmental and constitutional forces that shape who they are today helps people gain valuable insight and perspective on their current situation, which, in turn, may guide them in making significant changes in their lives. Some of the sources of difficulty in the present may already be known and require my help in putting them into a new context of understanding. Other dimensions of who they are and what they struggle with may be beyond awareness and may only be recognized and named through the therapeutic process that unfolds between me and my patients. This requires careful and respectful listening from my side and an effort on the part of my patients to attempt to talk increasingly freely about themselves and to come to listen to how they feel, think, and relate to themselves and others. It is in this manner that people may come to deepen their understanding about their own unique human nature.

Psychotherapy is intended to assist people to have greater success in their relationships, to achieve better clarity and confidence about who they are and what they want in life, and to reach their potential in pursuits that are important to them. I work with people to help them gain both greater self-awareness and self-knowledge so that they may take fuller responsibility for their own lives. I work actively with my patients to achieve these ends and encourage them to speak freely with me about how the therapy is going and to ask for my feedback about my perspectives on the process when they need it.

If my patient and I believe that medication will be helpful, I will judiciously prescribe it, but only during the course of the ongoing psychotherapy. There are times that medication is not only necessary for symptom-relief, but also required for some patients to be able to make optimal use of the therapeutic process. However useful medication may be, greater degrees of emotional relief and emotional growth can only be achieved through a therapeutic process of self-discovery.

Psychoanalysis is a more in-depth form of psychotherapy for people who may have had unsuccessful attempts at resolving their problems and achieving their potentials through briefer therapies. Some people find that they keep running into emotional or functional limitations that prevent them from having more success in work, satisfaction in relationships, and greater peace of mind. Patterns of relating to themselves or others that may have developed out of necessity earlier in life may impede fuller freedom and satisfaction at the present time and may interfere with a sense of wholeness and solidness in their lives. In these circumstances, I work with patients more frequently in order to generate a therapeutic process that is more comprehensive and is intended to bring about fuller and more lasting changes.

For more information on psychoanalysis, please go to http://www.apsa.org/About_Psychoanalysis.aspx