I have over 30 years of clinical experience working with adults, children, adolescents, and couples. I have worked both in private practice and community mental health settings. While at Oakland Children’s Hospital (UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital Oakland), I created a mental health assessment and treatment program for children and directed it for ten years.
I am part of a new wave of psychoanalysts who are committed to engaging and uncovering the deepest parts of who you are. Unlike early psychoanalysts, I work in a collaborative way to understand the complexity and uniqueness of each patient. Through this process, we gain an understanding of patterns and structures that were utilized to keep you safe when you were younger, but are now no longer necessary. This intensive process can be life changing and helps facilitate a new internal freedom.
Supervision and Consultation
Many experienced clinicians consult with me about their work. I also provide supervision to post-graduate interns and to social work graduate students.
Education
Psychoanalytic Institute of Northern-California-Certificate-in-Psychoanalysis
PsyD Doctor of Psychology in Psychoanalysis
MSW University of California, Berkeley
BA University of California, Santa Cruz
Teaching
I am on the faculty at many Bay Area Training Programs for therapists. They include: The San Francisco Center for Psychoanalysis (SFCP); The Psychoanalytic Institute of Northern California (PINC); Northern California Society for Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy (NCSPP); and The Psychotherapy Institute (TPI).
I enjoy educating others, and throughout the year I teach many classes a year to professionals in the field. I regularly give training presentations to community agencies.
Selected Classes
Child Development
Connection, Ruthlessness and Loss in the Young Child
Middle Childhood
Pre-Adolescence and the Transition to Adolescence
Clinical Issues
Paving Paradise And Putting Up A Parking Lot: The Inability To Learn From Experience
The Body (speaks)
The “Action” in Therapeutic Action
Case Formulation
Creativity
Play and Potential Space
Supervision
Giving Difficult Feedback: Working with Transference/ Countertransference in Supervision
Theory
Winnicott
I am invited to speak on many different topics
Discussant for “Seeing Blind: Envisioning Ourselves and Others” with academic and writer Georgina Kleege.
“Can It Be Child Treatment While Working Solely With The Parent Dyad?” IPA COFAP Conference.
Discussant for the film Shoplifters. Directed by Hirokazu Kore-eda, SFCP Child Colloquium.
On Stage Interviewer with film critic and author J. Hoberman on his book “Make My Day: Movie Culture in the Age of Reagan”. Pacific Film Archive, Berkeley Art Museum.
Discussant for the opera Rusalka for the San Francisco Opera on the Couch.
Discussant for Sound Image: Deconstructing the Relationship of Music, Film and Psychoanalysis with the film composer, Todd Boekelheide.
Discussant for the film Leave No Trace. Directed by Debra Granik.
Discussant for the film Heaven Is A Traffic Jam On the 405, Directed by Frank Stiefel, a film about overwhelming internal states and creativity.
Discussant for “Attachment Issues and Child Treatment” for a Bay Area training on Neuropsychoanalysis.
Moderator for discussion on “Queer Theory and Psychoanalysis”.
Discussant for British International Visiting Scholar and Autism Expert, Anne Alvarez.
Professional Affiliations
Member
International Psychoanalytic Association (IPA)
Psychoanalytic Institute of Northern California (PINC)
San Francisco Center for Psychoanalysis (SFCP)
Northern California Society of Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy (NCSPP)
Committee Work for the Psychoanalytic Institute of Northern California (PINC)
Chair 2nd Fridays: Linking Arts, Culture, Creativity and Psychoanalysis
Member Extra Curricular Education Committee
Member Visiting Scholar Committee
Previous PINC Committee Work
Candidate Representative to the Board of Directors
Progressions Committee
Co-Chair International Visiting Scholar Committee