My Approach to Helping
My approach to healing is strongly influenced by the decade I spent doing research at the Harvard Psychotherapy Research Program. Since leaving Boston 10 years ago I have continued to study ways to make therapy more effective and time efficient. I enjoy working with people who may have found previous therapies to be ineffective. I specialize in Intensive Short-Term Dynamic Psychotherapy (ISTDP), which I have studied, taught, written about and researched for the past 25 years. ISTDP has been demonstrated to be effective for treatment resistant depression and anxiety, relationship issues, somatization disorders (body pain, IBS, headaches. etc), personality disorders, as well as a variety of other common presenting conditions.
I am a clinical psychologist licensed in the State of Virginia. I see adult individuals and couples, as well as families and adolescents. I am certified as a teacher and supervisor by the International Experiential Dynamic Therapy Association (IEDTA). I am Faculty Chair at the ISTDP Training Program at the Washington School of Psychiatry. I provide supervision and training of mental health providers in different forms of experiential dynamic psychotherapy.
My other area of specialization is couples therapy. My approach to couples work is influenced by both ISTDP and the Psychobiological Approach to Couples Therapy (PACT). PACT is a cutting edge couples treatment developed by Dr. Stan, Tatkin which integrates attachment theory, neurobiology, and arousal theory.
I am a former Clinical Instructor in Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, where I taught psychology interns and psychiatry residents at the Beth Israel Deaconess HospitalHarvard Medical School. For a decade I was the Assistant Director of the Program for Psychotherapy Research at Harvard’s Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, where I researched and wrote about Short-Term Dynamic Psychotherapy. I have published numerous articles on psychotherapy, psychotherapy integration, psychotherapy research, and couples, as well as a book on experiential dynamic psychotherapy: Treating Affect Phobia: A Treatment Manual for Short-term Dynamic Psychotherapy (Guilford Press, 2003).