For me, psychotherapy involves a profound kind of storytelling, where, with a trained listener, the psyche speaks the raw, unfinished stories we carry deep within us. These are not the polished, rehearsed stories refined for an audience, but rather the ones still trembling, unformed, and longing to be understood. These are the stories written in the margins of memory, in the echoes of childhood, and in the silences between words.
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The story, in therapy, often begins in fragments. A feeling here. A memory there. A repeating pattern with no clear beginning. People often talk about what they have discovered about themselves and what still evades them; what they long for and what feels stubbornly out of reach. The client arrives with some uncertainty about how the chapters or scenes of their life connect, often unsure whether the ending can be changed. My role is not to correct the plot but to illuminate it, to ask questions and give reflections that help the deeper themes of your life reveal themselves.
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This process, as I see it, is both a therapeutic one, but also, at best, a collaborative and artistic one, where we work together to slow down and listen differently. Like poetry, psychoanalysis asks us to dwell in nuance, to follow the thread of a dream, to attend to what lies beneath the surface, to wonder about what is absent or cannot be felt. In this way the therapeutic process often mirrors the structure of a poem: circling, layering, returning again and again to the experiences that compel us, keep us up at night, and get under our skin. As a psychoanalyst, I have a deep reverence for this approach to the psyche -- this kind of sacred attention to the inner world that allows the unspeakable to find form and allows us to re-imagine the story we’re living.
I’ve worked with individuals and couples, with students and trainees for over fifteen years -- helping people look for missing pages, uncover buried storylines, and write new endings with deeper meaning. This process takes time and it asks for a trained ear, attuned presence, and the courage to sit with what is unfinished.
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My extensive background in sexuality studies and relational psychoanalysis gives me a particular sensitivity to the unspoken parts of the story—whether it be the erotic, the shame-bound, the protected and armoured, the parts silenced by culture and by family. As the founder of the human sexuality program at Southwestern College and as a Training and Supervising Analyst at the Institute of Contemporary Psychoanalysis, I’ve worked to make a meaningful impact on the kind of care, curiosity, and skill that future therapists bring to the most intimate dimensions of their client’s lives. As a supervisor and trainer, I am deeply committed to my own ongoing growth and learning. It is one of the great privileges of my life to accompany others in their unfolding -- to be a witness and collaborator in the process of transformation, helping clients bring more depth, texture, and meaning to the stories they are living.
