About Our Approach—

We work together with you with some basic convictions in mind: 

1)    We as human persons are profoundly relational—we are not simply reducible to our private thoughts and lonely conceptions.

2)    From birth to death our lives are interwoven in relational networks and communities; families and friends, colleagues and coworkers; we cannot pretend we are independent and self-sufficient beings who don’t need relationships.

3)    We seek to make our lives meaningful.  We are profoundly moral and spiritual creatures—we are not simply responding to our environment

4)    We as persons seek to organize our emotional experiences of ourselves and of others in the most life sustaining and satisfying manner—we are not simply motivated by our physical impulses and drives.    

5)    We grow up in imperfect families and in an imperfect world.  As a result we often struggle with ourselves, with those with whom we have lived, and with those we currently relate to—we do not live in a vacuum and we cannot pretend to be unbothered or unaffected by the way we were raised and what has come our way.  

            6)    We as human persons can change, do change and can flourish
                 as mature and virtuous.  We need a relational context to
                 help us organize and understand ourselves. These relational
                 contexts help us deal with our pain, and enable us to feel
                 emotionally stable and richly alive.

 


Based on these convictions we have found ourselves comfortable with and deeply influenced by a cluster of psychological theories and perspectives.  Our approach is informed by a blending of Attachment Theory (Bowlby), Psychoanalytic Self Psychology (Kohut) and Intersubjectivity Theory (Stolorow, Atwood, Orange).  Thus, we are more psychodynamic and psychoanalytic in our perspectives.  We think developmentally about human experience, the relational worlds that formed our experience, and about the importance of our human unconscious.  The relationship between our clients and us is a high priority in terms of respect, honor, safety and security. That relationship creates a unique emotional context by which we can explore and unfold how our clients experience themselves and others. This “being together” provides an opportunity to reorganize and to fundamentally change the way the client experiences and regulates emotions, experiences and regulates meaning.  We attempt together to establish goals and priorities that will orient the counseling process. Yet, at the same time, attempt to avoid superficial short-term, solution-focused agendas. So, our approach is not primarily oriented towards simple symptom management or minimal behavioral adjustment.  Instead we are committed to assisting our clients as they move toward a profound inner transformation that can result in the person flourishing as mature and moral.

   
 
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