When your client walks into your office, does she look at you, smile, stare straight ahead, ask how you are? Are you happy to see him or do you dread the hour? Does the room feel safe or edgy? Do you feel confident or somehow under scrutiny? Are you bored? Excited? Sexually stimulated? Distant? Do you find yourself lecturing? Do silences feel welcome or nearly unbearable? Does time go by quickly or very slowly? Do you make an intervention and then feel wise or foolish or simply baffled?
Everything you experience in the hour, and even your thoughts and feelings at other times, informs you about your relationship with your client. Used wisely, this information can unlock the mystery of who your client truly is, who you become when you are with her or him, and what is happening in the room at any particular moment to make the therapy lively and useful or deadened and tiring.
Whatever your theoretical orientation, we will look at current cases and explore ways to make your interactions with your clients more conscious and effective, whether working with individuals, couples, families, or groups.
"Many therapeutic orientations assume that the therapist’s personal growth is important; indeed, the analysis of countertransference is at the heart of contemporary psychoanalytic technique. Despite this fact, systematic attempts to spell out the internal processes involved in harnessing and working constructively with the intense, conflictual, and often painful feelings and thoughts that emerge for therapists when negotiating difficult moments with patients are rare. Unless the therapist has the ability to engage in this type of inner work, however, his or her conceptual grasp of relevant theoretical and technical principles is useless."
Jeremy D. Safran & J. Christopher Muran, Negotiating the Therapeutic Alliance
We bring a combined experience and knowledge of over sixty years of study and work with object relations, gestalt therapy, body oriented therapies, systems theory, attachment theory, drug and alcohol counseling, and the use of transference and countertransference. Richard has taught in the Chemical Dependency Counseling Certificate Programs at California State University, Hayward and Sonoma State University and codirected the training program at Pyramid Alternatives in Pacifica, CA. He is an associate at the Men’s Center for Counseling and Psychotherapy in Berkeley. Paul spent six years as a supervisor at the Psychotherapy Institute in Berkeley. He studied Gestalt Therapy and group process at Esalen Institute for three years. Both have been in private practice for many years.
