Individual Therapy

It may be that the problems holding you back are easily dissolved with a shot of fresh insight. More often, however, our problems derive from established patterns of thinking and feeling that formed gradually over the whole course of our lives. Achieving sustained relief, then, may require a course of therapy.

Therapy is a type of consulting relationship. At its best, therapy provides guided exploration of the challenges to your full engagement with life, sharing feedback and recommendations to help you move forward, all in the environment of a protected container where growth in self-awareness and new mindsets can flourish.

Typical engagements in therapy last between 6 months to 2 years. I like to follow a sequence of intervals at the outset that provide natural opportunities for breaking: meet for four sessions and assess progress; meet for another four sessions and assess again. If it seems we’re on target I’d recommend we set a schedule of continuing to meet weekly and checking in on a quarterly basis.

We’ll have been successful not just if you’re free of the problem you brought to therapy but if you’ve got a focus on meaningful new goals, and are oriented to a path and moving forward. Read more about how I view therapy on the FAQs and My Philosophy pages.

Individual therapy sessions cost $180 for a 50m session.

Couples Therapy

Sometimes the problems we encounter are of our own construction. At other times, these problems are set in the context of a primary, romantic relationship. The dysfunction burdening the relationship doesn’t occur apart from the particular combination of you and your partner. In these cases, the couple may be said to share a task of learning to improve some particular aspect of relational functioning.

Couples therapy provides a space for the couple to jointly cultivate a better understanding of how they tend to function together around fundamental tasks of relationship: appreciating and supporting the other’s growth and development; working together in a common undertaking; fostering intimate relations both physical and emotional; making decisions involving shared resources (e.g. money); and resolving disputes/conflicts when they arise.

Effective couples therapy cannot rest with understanding. Useful engagements will continue on to foster development of practical skills, including through active experimentation between sessions.

Couples therapy sessions cost $240 for a 75 minute session.

Assessment

Psychological Assessment can serve a range of needs. The essential function of assessment, however, is to provide you a clearer understanding of whether you have an emotional disorder, what that specific disorder might be, and what interventions might be recommended.

I see two different kinds of assessment engagements: diagnostic assessments and personality assessment.

Diagnostic assessments are the most common and serve simply to determine whether the client has any kind of emotional disturbance that could interfere with occupational functioning. This need arises in the context of applications for adoption, law enforcement/security work, and other role determinations. A typical engagement would entail one or two sessions of 1-1 interviewing plus administration of any indicated psychological tests (e.g. the MMPI).

Personality assessments are called on to gain a clearer picture of the dynamics underlying an obvious area of dysfunction. I practice personality assessment using a style known as Therapeutic Assessment (TA). TA is a powerful innovation in the assessment field. Assuming a collaborative stance, TA invites the client to help generate the questions to be answered, and to participate in interpreting the findings.

A TA engagement begins with an agenda-setting meeting and is followed by 2-3 sessions of psychological testing using objective personality measures (e.g. the Personality Assessment Inventory, PAI or MMPI-2-RF) and projective measures (e.g. the Thematic Apperception Test, TAT or Rorschach Inkblot Method, RIM). The engagement produces a feedback letter summarizing findings and recommendations discussed.

The cost of an assessment engagement varies depending on your specific needs. Diagnostic assessments may run between $250-400 where personality assessments range from $800-1200. I would be able to offer an estimate after an initial meeting to discuss the scope of your needs.