My Journey

I have been practicing psychotherapy leading to psychoanalysis during the past three decades.  

In 1994, after receiving a master’s degree in social work from New York University, I obtained the New York State License for Clinical Social Work.  My earlier experiences include working at the Carter Burden Center for the Aging on the Upper Eastside of Manhattan; the Child Guidance Center (Families and Children) in Jamaica, Queens; and the Catholic Charities Senior Housing Program in Brooklyn Heights, Bushwick, and Midwood, Brooklyn.

In 1996, after working in the field with many types of patients, I returned to school for in-depth psychotherapy training at the Training Institute for Mental Health.  This study eventually led me to the Manhattan Institute for Adult Psychoanalysis, where I trained in psychotherapy and psychoanalysis for an additional six years. Additionally, I studied Trauma for two more years.  During this time, I saw adult patients at the Blanton-Peale Institute and Counseling Center.  I worked at  Blanton-Peale as a staff therapist and as a group supervisor for residents-in-training.

In 1999, I joined the Franciscan Community Center on the Upper West Side as Head of Counseling. There I led and taught a team of social workers to help children, parents, and teachers. This experience helped me truly understand how one’s early development impacts adulthood.  This is when I opened my private practice and devoted myself to integrating all that I have learned and observed.

Besides working with people one on one, I also focus on group dynamics.  My thinking developed from seeing how many of my individual patients are affected by groups of people with whom they are involved: their families of origin, their co-workers, their nuclear families.

Between 2005 and 2008, I volunteered in Sri Lanka as a group psychotherapy instructor, teaching Sri Lankan men and women who were themselves being trained as group counselors.  These freshly trained counselors then dispersed throughout the chaotic countryside to help victims of both the civil war and victims the 2004 tsunami. This was a very humbling experience. It led me to pursue a three-year certificate program in group psychotherapy from Eastern Group Psychotherapy in the fall of 2012. And eventually another certificate program in Addictions in 2020.

It is my hope that my training and experience can be of benefit to you.

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