Biography
Education
Minor: Organizational Psychology
Private Practice I began my career working as a psychology intern in various settings: a drug and substance abuse program, a child and family guidance center, and the adolescent unit of an in-patient psychiatric hospital. Concurrently, I worked for seven years in the Los Angeles Division of Didi Hirsch Community Mental Health Center providing crisis intervention counseling to walk-in and telephone clients. In 1988, I opened my private practice as a Clinical Psychologist licensed as a Marriage and Family Therapist. I worked with individuals, adults and adolescents who experienced a variety of mood and compulsive disorders resulting from childhood neglect, loss and trauma, including sexual abuse. During the 1990s, my practice expanded to providing group as well as individual therapy for men and women who had been sexually molested as children. All suffered from relationship problems and a variety of compulsive, or addictive, thought and behavior patterns as a result of their neglect during childhood. Working with these clients led me to feel that I needed more in-depth psychodynamic training to be able to help more effectively. Consequently, in 2000, I began psychoanalytic training at the New Center for Psychoanalysis and completed a doctoral degree in psychoanalysis in 2011. My professional experience and training in psychoanalysis (in-depth psychology) enables me to work with people suffering from disabling mood and thought-pattern disorders associated with the aftermath of a wide range of family dysfunction and childhood trauma or loss. This may include: loss of a parent or sibling, attachment and commitment problems, repetitive relationship problems, and addictive problems related to drugs, alcohol, food or sex. Learn more about my approach. |