---

Looking For a Psychotherapist

 

As you look for a psychotherapist, you will be confronted with an often confusing array of qualifications and credentials. Research has been clear in showing that the most important factor in therapy is the quality of the therapeutic relationship, not the particular techniques or theoretical orientation of the therapist. However, professional credentials do indicate different training back-grounds and levels of specialization. Click on these links for more detailed information on various options available in choosing a therapist and what different credentials mean  (i.e., Ph.D., PsyD, MFT, etc.).

 

---

Training, Qualifications, and Professional Experience

 

I earned an M.A. in Community-Clinical Psychology from California State University, Northridge in 1989. In 1995, I completed a Ph.D. at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, a rigorous academic program in clinical psychology with a strong psychodynamic and existential focus accredited by the American Psychological Association since 1949. My training at UT focused on assessment, individual, and group treatment of serious conduct, mood, and personality disturbances in adolescents and adults. My dissertation research was on the impact of childhood family experiences on  women's relationship issues.

My training also included a predoctoral internship at  Howard University Hospital in Washington, DC, where I was involved with the assessment, individual, and group treatment of economically distressed adults and adolescents, primarily working with the seriously mentally ill and with liver and kidney transplant patients and their families. I completed a postdoctoral residency in Group Psychotherapy and Psychology with the DC Mental Health Commission in Washington, DC, treating adults in outpatient community mental health, inpatient substance abuse treatment, and locked ward inpatient psychiatric care for the criminally insane, as well as supervising psychology and psychiatry trainees. I completed 

additional postdoctoral training in Adolescent Inpatient Psychiatry at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, where I received intensive supervision and experience in assessment, individual, group, and family treatment of adolescents and children. 

From 1997 to 2001, I was staff psychologist and assistant director of children and youth services at the Kedren Community Mental Health Center and Acute Psychiatric Hospital in South Los Angeles. From 2001 to the end of 2008 I was the Director of Behavioral Medicine at the Long Beach Memorial Family Medicine Residency Program, where I assisted in training primary care physicians in the specialty practice of treating and coordinating medical care for people of all ages and from birth to death. I have also been a member of the volunteer clinical faculty at the USC Keck School of Medicine since 1997, UCLA Geffen School of Medicine since 1998, and UC Irvine College of Medicine since 2002.

 

I've been seeing patients in private practice since 1997.

 

---

Therapeutic Orientation: What To Expect In Our Work Together

 

I am a psychodynamically-oriented psychotherapist. I believe that underlying the emotional difficulties and health issues we all suffer from time to time, there are well-established patterns of feeling, thought, behavior, and expectations about our relationships with others and about ourselves. These patterns, which may be described as personality, begin with our earliest interactions with parents and other important caregivers who teach us how to express ourselves, judge ourselves, and whether others can be expected to respond to our needs. Problems in our early interactions with important caregivers tend to lead to later ones. Children with behavior problems in preschool often continue to have difficulties into adulthood; in adulthood, emotional difficulties that seem to come out of nowhere are often rooted in longstanding patterns and childhood traumas.

 

Most often, people seek psychotherapy for relief from specific symptoms. Consequently, therapy tends to begin by focusing on reducing anxiety and nervousness, decreasing emotional pain, improving mood and the ability to concentrate, sleep, and so forth. Short-term therapy can provide relatively quick relief from acute suffering, and this also tends to be the kind of work highly favored by managed care plans, which place considerable emphasis on short-term care for acute conditions. What often happens, however, is that over the course of symptom reduction, patients become aware of other issues, namely, the patterns of feeling, thought, behavior, and expectations that underlie their symptoms. As patients realize how these personality issues have persisted through their lives, affecting their ability to experience closeness with others and accept and appreciate themselves, many choose to continue treatment after the initial period of symptom reduction. Getting to the root of these issues can promote personal growth and may also prevent symptoms from reappearing.

 

 

---

 

Other Resources

 

Information and assistance regarding many mental health, social, and healthcare issues may be found here.

 

---

 

 

 

 

Home     Fees & Policies     Contact Me