Welcome
Thanks for visiting my website. Therapy can be invaluable when you’re feeling stuck or in hard times, but therapy is for good times too — it’s an enriching growth experience that can transform your life.
I’m a psychodynamic therapist and I specialize in individual therapy for adults. I’m based in Los Angeles (Manhattan Beach), but I work online throughout California, including the Bay Area.
My clients are mostly professionals, of all ages. They come from diverse backgrounds and typically lead busy, sometimes stressful lives. They may struggle with anxiety, depression, relationship, or self-confidence issues. I work with creatives, executives, and professionals in entertainment, media, and business; fellow therapists who trust me to be their therapist; people from immigrant family backgrounds (I speak Spanish); academics; internationals; concerned parents, and others.
People contact me for different reasons. Some want to address recent difficulties, others to tackle old and recurring issues. Or, thru are in a good moment but would like a weekly therapy ritual to sustain personal growth and their current good life. These are all good reasons to seek therapy.
I would single out two qualities to describe my work as a therapist. First, as a sensitive psychodynamic therapist, I’m especially attuned to your particular history and personality, and I’m very interested to understand you as a unique, complex individual. Second, I’m skilled in my ability to generate productive movement, change and growth — toward more balance, love, vitality, and fulfillment.
I invite you to contact me. Feel free to reach out if you have questions or wish to schedule a brief chat or first appointment.
About Me
This section is entitled “About Me”, but you’ll notice it’s mainly about me as a therapist, not so much about the rest of me. 🙂 (I’m a typical therapist in that I don’t disclose much about my personal life, though I express my personality when we work together.)
I was trained at the Wright Institute in Berkeley and the Family Service Agency of Marin, and I’ve been practicing for over a decade now, with my own private practice.
As a psychodynamic (or psychoanalytic) therapist, I help you outgrow unwanted patterns of feeling, thinking, and acting. We explore, emotionally and intellectually, how and when these patterns formed, how they manifest today, and how you can move beyond them. It’s a process that brings growth and transformation.
My therapeutic style is friendly but professional and respectful of boundaries. I try not to talk too much or little and aim for active, but not overactive, participation. I take up the position of a fellow-traveler in your life (though I always stay outside your life), and I explore your journey with you, by talking with you about it.
As a former college professor in the humanities and social sciences, I have a PhD in political theory from the University of California at Berkeley. I studied at Berkeley in an interdisciplinary mix of philosophy, social theory, political science, literature, and psychoanalytic theory, and taught for several years at universities in California and at McGill University in Canada. I can draw on this background at opportune moments in therapy, to frame or broaden or deepen our conversation, but I’m not long-winded about it, and I have a good sense of which clients would occasionally like to hear from this side of me and which would not. 🙂
I enjoy humor and laughter, and if you’re shy or introverted, please don’t worry, I’m easy to talk to and know how to fill quiet moments.
