The Principles and Convictions that Underlie My Way of Working

The Power of Creativity

Perhaps the most important cornerstone of my psychotherapeutic practice is my fascination with creativity, which I have researched intensively over the years in collaboration with Paris Descartes University. This universal human attribute can have a transformative effect on our psychotherapeutic sessions. It can breathe life into sessions that seem to be stuck and going nowhere. In addition, it can tap into your ability to overcome obstacles through the exercise of your imagination, which lies at the basis of creativity.

There Is Nothing Wrong with You That Cannot Be Fixed by What Is Right with You.

It's all a question of focus, in particular a focus on your strengths and resources, as opposed to psychopathological diagnoses.

A Problem Is a Solution in the Making.

That solution lies in you and can be coaxed out of you by your innate creativity even if you are not aware that you have it. My task, in the fashion of a midwife, is to help you give birth to your solution-building skills and the creativity that goes with them.

The Issue Is in the Tissue.

In somatic experiencing, through a simple focus on the body it becomes possible to tap into the energy and intuitive wisdom transmitted to the internal organs largely by the polyvagal (= much-wandering) nerve. This energy manifests itself in the form of meaning-loaded, creativity-generating sensations, images, emotions and movements. These, in turn, can enhance the solution-oriented thoughts coming from the thinking brain. In short, top-down thinking and bottom-up feeling become integrated in what could be called a magic synthesis. One has to experience just how dramatically this process plays out in order to believe it.

Areas in Which I Can Help

These involve primarily individual therapy for adolescents and adults (including older adults, for whom end-of-life issues loom large) perturbed by relational disturbances and mood disorders. In addition, I do couple therapy, in which I adopt approaches based, among other methods, on feedback of emotional experience to the partners, the encouragement of mutual intensive listening by the partners, and the damping down of outbursts through a substantial slowing down of speech. Often trauma lies at the root of couple trouble, which calls for specific body-oriented trauma-healing skills, in which I am specialized. (See Academic Qualifications, below.)

I'm Not Here to Waste Your Time and Money.

I am here, in fact, to put myself out of business. Therapy is brief in the sense that not one more session is held than is needed, and it is you who decides the need.