Most people come to treatment seeking relief from suffering, whether that takes the form of anxiety, depression, emptiness, inner conflict, painful relationships, or a persistent sense of feeling stuck. You may recognize patterns that keep repeating despite your efforts to change them, or feel that something is missing without knowing quite what it is. Psychoanalytically oriented treatment offers a place to explore these experiences and come to understand what lies beneath them.

This type of therapy begins where common sense reaches its limits. Often, we know that something is hurting us but cannot understand why we keep returning to it, or why knowing what we “should” do does not help us do it. Psychoanalytic treatment focuses on what we do not yet know about ourselves that contributes to our suffering. This is what we mean by “the unconscious”: feelings, wishes, fears, and ways of protecting ourselves that shape our lives outside our awareness.

Part of my role is to help you understand what your distress may be communicating. Unpleasant feelings can be signals about unconscious “bad deals” we have made with ourselves: compromises that once helped us preserve love, maintain security, or protect ourselves from something painful, but now come at too great a cost. These compromises may leave us sacrificing our own needs, sabotaging what we want, or repeating painful relationships. Together, we explore how these patterns developed, what purpose they continue to serve, and what makes them difficult to relinquish.

To move beyond these patterns, we must come to know ourselves more deeply and honestly. Yet this is extraordinarily difficult to do alone. Much of human suffering arises from patterns we cannot fully see while we are caught inside them. In our sessions, you are invited to speak as openly as you can about whatever comes to mind: everyday experiences, relationships, memories, dreams, and feelings that may seem confusing, contradictory, or difficult to admit. My role is to listen closely and help us think about what emerges, including connections and meanings that may initially escape both of us.

What distinguishes this treatment is its sustained attention to the unconscious and to the therapist-patient relationship itself. While some therapies emphasize tools, structured exercises, or strategies for managing symptoms, psychoanalytic work also asks why those symptoms have taken hold and what keeps them in place. The relationship between us becomes a living part of that inquiry. Familiar fears and expectations may emerge here, including concerns about being judged, misunderstood, rejected, or dependent on another person. Being able to experience, explore, and work through these feelings together is part of how the relationship itself can become transformative.

My role is to provide a therapeutic space and relationship in which conflict, loss, guilt, envy, love, aggression, fear, and longing can gradually be thought about and put into words. Feelings that have had to be pushed away or expressed through symptoms, actions, and painful relationships can begin to acquire meaning. Together, we explore the deeper truths of your inner world and how early emotional experiences continue to shape the ways you love, suffer, protect yourself, and seek meaning.

This process is often full of surprises. The unconscious does not unfold linearly or predictably, and neither of us can know in advance exactly what will emerge. Some of the most meaningful discoveries develop unexpectedly through our work together. A deep and authentic therapeutic relationship with a devoted, well-trained psychoanalytic clinician offers something increasingly rare in modern life: sustained time and attention in which emotional truth can be held, explored, and gradually understood. Much of what makes this experience meaningful can only be felt and known through participating in it.

My perspective is shaped by more than a decade of clinical experience, personal growth through this work, and a tested faith in the psychoanalytic process. While I cannot guarantee particular outcomes, the aim extends beyond symptom reduction to the possibility of profound internal exploration, wisdom, and change. Over time, what once felt fixed, compulsive, vexing, or fated may begin to loosen, allowing for greater freedom, vitality, emotional depth, creativity, and the capacity to create a life that feels more real, alive, and free.