I am a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist (license #MFC28308) in private practice in Palo Alto, CA. I welcome calls from adult individuals and couples who are considering getting some therapy.

Perhaps you are feeling anxious, depressed, bereft, or angry. Maybe life has thrown a monkey wrench into your works, or perhaps a new stage in life has delivered a truckload of disappointments and difficulties. These are the sorts of times that coming to see a psychotherapist like me can help turn the lemons into lemonade, and set you up for a future that looks a lot more promising than your past.

I work from a psychoanalytic model, which means that the focus of the treatment is the therapeutic relationship we form as we spend time together in sessions of 50 minutes. What helps my patients get better is having the experience of my listening to them very carefully as they share their stories of what has brought them to see me. I often work from an intensive model, meaning that I see my patients several times a week, generally for extended periods of time.

Working with couples is a challenge I enjoy very much. Sometimes couples come for premarital counseling. Sometimes couples wait far too long to call for help, and then it may be too late. Most of the time couples call simply because they know their relationship has been better in the past, and they want a return of the really great feelings they once shared. I am delighted to work with all sorts of couples, and am pleased that our society’s ideas about human sexuality are becoming less rigid than in the past.

Sometimes I like to introduce my patients to the Enneagram, a fascinating and useful system for understanding personality differences. Working with the Enneagram gives us another language to use in understanding how we each see the world a bit differently, and how we each have habits of mind that can interfere with getting our needs met.

You may be wondering how to decide whether or not to take a chance on working with me as your therapist. I have been in private practice in Santa Clara County for nearly 25 years. You might take some reassurance from the fact that many of my patients are other therapists who have sought me out. I am highly respected by my colleagues, and have been elected and appointed to many positions in our professional organizations.

I am a graduate of Brown University and of Santa Clara University. I received the Outstanding Alumni of the Year Award from the Division of Counseling Psychology and Education at Santa Clara University. I was a candidate for two years at the Psychoanalytic Institute of Northern California in San Francisco. I completed the Palo Alto Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Training Program offered by the San Francisco Center for Psychoanalysis. I am a clinical member of the Northern California Society for Psychoanalytic Psychology and of the California Association of Marriage and Family Therapists.