Reflections on Psychology

In counseling, psychotherapy, and psychoanalysis, both patient and therapist are hypothesis ‘testers’ moment-to-moment in an effort to construct models to read or make sense out of current and anticipated future experiences.

For years, I have studied human trauma and psychological stamina, learning from those who strove to effectively manage challenging and/or traumatic circumstances without developing psychological or psychiatric symptoms.

I am a cisgendered, heterosexual, Caucasian male who continues – especially in the current climate – to examine and attempt to understand the ways socialization as a white male of privilege can unconsciously influence my clinical work.

Motivational Systems Theory as well as infant observational and attachment research point strongly to the importance of the therapist’s empathic attunement to what patients say and how they are saying it, and the clarity with which the analyst attends to adaptive and developmental strivings to that have been thwarted throughout a patient’s life.

An analyst’s or therapist’s lived experience inevitably invades the intersubjective space (where the Venn Diagram of the practitioner’s phenomenological/subjective, moment-to-moment experience intersects with patients).

Advances in psychopharmacology coupled with my professional experience treating patients who have problems with anxiety, attention, and mood led me to appreciate how medication can play a necessary but not always sufficient role in helping patients achieve their treatment goals.

After our initial 90-minute appointment, and assuming there is a good fit and connection between us, the next step in my process – whether for psychotherapy or psychoanalysis – is to do a more formal assessment using objective, normed, standardized, reliable, and valid measures.