“The human species is fantastically complex and often doesn’t know what it is doing. The search for a better understanding of our behavior is vital. It’s also difficult, never-ending and still very much worth the struggle.” Those are the last sentences of a review in the New York Times Book Review by David Leonhardt of […]
I write these thoughts during these very scary and uncertain times. As one patient put it, times that feel very different than any that have come before. I’m mindful of this as I write about space and about how psychotherapy and psychoanalysis carve out a space, a place, to inhabit in order to reflect and […]
I write these thoughts during these very scary and uncertain times for many people. As one client of mine put it, times that feel very different than any that have come before. I’m mindful of this as I write about space and about psychotherapy (and psychoanalysis) as about having a space, a place, to inhabit […]
On this Thanksgiving Day, I’m thinking of so many people in the country living in heightened fear as an aftermath of the recent election. People who have come to this country to escape atrocities in their home countries, or who have come seeking more opportunity for themselves and their families. People of color now fearing […]
Recently a friend recommended to me an episode of Charlie Rose’s program where his guest was the author and New York Times columnist David Brooks. My friend recommended it because of the astute commentary on the current Presidential race that Mr. Brooks offers. I found the show full of insights, not just about this very […]
A recent KQED Forum program addressed in some complexity issues pertaining to access to mental health treatment. The program, “Despite Laws to Increase Access, Many Californians Struggle to Find Mental Health Services,” addresses problems of access for consumers and difficulties providers face who accept insurance for their services. Given this informative and insightful program, I’m […]
It is a joy to be hidden, and a disaster not to be found. ― D.W. Winnicott I absolutely love the above quotation from one of the most influential people of the last century. Winnicott was a psychoanalyst and a pediatrician whose work with children informed his thinking. Contained in so few words is something […]
“It is not just that the patient sees that he has been active in bringing on his own misery, whereas he thought he had been merely passive, but he sees, too, that he can also be active in another way that alters his past, present, and future all at once (Schafer, 1973).” It’s a ludicrous […]
I work with many people struggling with depression and anxiety. As many of my patients can attest, although there are no quick answers or cookie-cutter solutions, with our joint commitment to delve deeply into the causes of their depression in order to seek true remedies and promote lasting change, they often feel better, less depressed […]
“Psychotherapy is an obstinate attempt of two people to recover the wholeness of being human through the relationship between them.” — R. D. Laing (1967) I recently came across this quotation and it seems to me to eloquently and succinctly capture what psychotherapy and psychoanalysis are all about. It seems to me that the core […]
