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. In particular, principles from Self Psychology direct the psychoanalyst to be with patients in a manner that expands mutual awareness and understanding of the emotional, behavioral, and thinking patterns both interactants bring to their exchange.

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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). Years ago, this notion would be simply reduced to the ubiquity of what psychoanalysts first referred to as countertransference, the phenomenon that could be minimized by practitioners having spent hours on the “couch” themselves, so they could be “objective”, “scientific”, and be able to dust off the psychological detritus of the patient’s experience to illuminate truth in a sterile, surgically precise, and unbiased manner.

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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. Although as a psychologist, I am not licensed to prescribe medicine, I know from experience that psychopharmacology can be an important component in my work with patients.

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What is a Pre-treatment Assessment and Why I do it?

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 of: Your problems in living (e.g., anxiety, depression, alcohol or substance use, etc.); Your interpersonal strengths; Your needs in relationships; Your characteristic way of construing or understanding the interpersonal world. Psychologists are specifically trained to develop and administer these kinds of tools, and I use the findings from them to give me perspective on the specificity, breadth, and intensity of your struggles, and to identify the personal strengths and areas of resilience you bring to the treatment project.

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