Individual Psychotherapy

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"Psychoanalytic psychotherapy relies on collaboration in which the patient and therapist work together to explore unconscious feelings, thoughts, and conflicts through talk. The frequency of sessions are typically once to three times a week; it can be customized to the needs of the patient. During psychotherapy, the patient can either sit upright, opposite of the therapist or lay down on the couch. 

Psychoanalytic psychotherapy uses free association to place importance on the unconscious, and the centrality of the patient-therapist relationship. This treatment is expecially suited for those who need to get to the root of long-term problems and patterns that continually crop up and get in the way of living a fulfilled life. 

Some people seek help because of repeated failures brough about by self-destructive patterns of behavior. Others come because the way they are-their character-substantially limits their freedom and their pleasures. Still others want to definitively resolve psychological problems that were only temporarily or partially resolved by other forms of treatment.

Psychoanalytic psychotherapy can help peole with a wide variety of psychological problems, including phobias, obsessions, compulsions, anxiety, depression, sexual dysfunctions, personality disorders and traumatic injury.

Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy is an effective, evidence-based treatment rooted in psychoanalytic principles; this treatment technique has been shown to be helpful for a wide variety of mental health concerns. It has been shown to be especially helpful for problems or concerns that don't respond to other therapeutic modalities, therapeutic interventions, or medications alone. Psychoanalytic psychotherapy has also been shown to be effective for children, adolescents, and adults, providing relief from distressing symptoms and emotional suffering, and leading to deep and long lasting changes."

-American Psychoanalytic Association

"Psychodynamic or psychoanalytic psychotherapy refers to a range of treatments based on psychoanalytic concepts and methods that involve less frequent meetings and may be considerably briefer than psychoanalysis proper. Session frequency is typically once or twice per week, and the treatment may be either time limited or open ended. The essence of psychodynamic therapy is exploring those aspects of self that are not fully known, especially as they are manifested and potentially influenced in the therapy relationship."

-Jonathan Shedler, PhD 

"A couples relationship rests not only on conscious compatability of cultural, personal, and sexual ideals, but also on complementarity of repressed parts of each personality where unconscious communication determines the quality of the couple's intimacy and capacity for sustained emotional and sexual closeness over time. 

Intimacy is not only a feature of long-term relationships. It is a function of the amount of unconscious communication between people in any situation that supports it.

Problems within intimacy shows up when a courting couple, enjoying a sense of closeness, make a commitment to each other, only to find that this is the moment of withdrawal for one or both. The withdrawal is not actual seperation and breakup of the courting couple, but that of partial withdrawal into the self, a retreat from intimacy that is occasioned by the sudden finding of new and unwelcome features in the partner, characteristics that have burgeoned inexplicably.

Marital therapy recognizes that self and other are inextricably intertwined. Furthermore, the marital relationship and the sexual functioning of the couple are closely connected."

-David E. Scharff, M.D. & Jill Savege Scharff, M.D.

During treatment, the couple will gain insight into the relational dynamics creating struggles and the therapist helps to uncover and talk through both individuals roles in the unhealthy interactions. This greater insight on relationship challenges and distress will help the individuals within the relationship to change the way they perceive the relationship and each other.