the father of Western medicine
“It is far more important to know the person who has the disease than the disease that the person has.”
Assoc. Prof., PhD in social and medical anthropology, University of Oxford
“What the evidence shows… is that what matters most in mental health care is not diagnosing problems and prescribing medication, but developing meaningful relationships with sufferers with the aim of cultivating insight into their problems.”
Where Is the Evidence for “Evidence-Based” Therapy?,” Psychiatric Clinics of North America, Volume 41, Issue 2, 2018, pp 319-329
“Research shows that “evidence-based” therapies are weak treatments. Their benefits are trivial. Most patients do not get well. Even the trivial benefits do not last.”
the primacy of experience.
I focus on your subjective experience and existential dilemmas instead of assuming and treating reductionist diagnostic labels or repeating tired mantras and affirmations.
Fundamentally, we will grapple with the difficult yet liberating notion that the ‘pursuit of happiness’ is less about pleasure or success and more about the self-governing quest, always unachieved, of virtue—of defining and building a meaningful life.
THE ETERNAL DILEMMAS
My approach is premised on central puzzles that reflect the nuanced balance between opposing forces or ideas that one must navigate in the pursuit of betterment:
How can we maintain enough confidence to believe in our abilities and tackle challenging goals, while also cultivating the humility to critically reflect on our actions, recognize our limitations, and seek opportunities for improvement?
To improve ourselves, there must be an effort to control certain aspects of our lives and make intentional choices towards betterment. However, how does one discern when to exert control and when to surrender, understanding that some elements beyond our control are also integral to our growth journey?
Self-improvement often requires stepping out of our comfort zones to face new challenges and grow. Yet, how do we reconcile the need to seek discomfort for growth with the necessity of maintaining a certain level of comfort to ensure mental and emotional well-being?
In the pursuit of self-improvement, setting future goals is fundamental. Yet, how do we balance ambitious goal-setting with the necessity of finding contentment in the present moment, avoiding the trap of perpetual dissatisfaction with our current state?
In the quest for self-improvement, how does we balance the pursuit of knowledge, understanding that acquiring new information is essential for growth, with the wisdom of Socratic ignorance, acknowledging that the more we know, the more we realize how much we don't know?
How can we strive for perfection in their endeavors, recognizing perfection as an aspirational state that motivates improvement, while simultaneously understanding that true perfection is unattainable, thus requiring acceptance of imperfection as part of the growth process?
WHO IS THIS FOR?
We all have moments of fear, alienation, sadness, and confusion. These can be paralyzing, and they often hunt in groups. Our shame and insecurity is often the result of harboring within ourselves a version of an ideal self, but failing to live up to it. Thus, we are often our own tragic heroes.
You might be frustrated about not feeling fulfilled despite having what society has told you are the prerequisites; you might be worried that you have unpleasant feelings toward someone you love or are supposed to love; you may find yourself harboring uncomfortable fantasies; or you might be wondering why you can’t execute well despite being talented and bright. I can help you make sense of these experiences.
“Mental disorders are usually seen as the causes of symptoms. In the network perspective, symptoms are causes themselves.”
MY WORK
I weave lessons from ancient philosophy on grappling with the ego, gaining freedom through discipline, attaining excellence through habit, appreciating stillness, and learning from adversity into my sessions. Working with me, you will find the courage to welcome challenges that today seem overwhelming.
My clients—many of whom have been to multiple conventional psychotherapists—regularly tell me that this is the first time they have felt truly understood. Many have a profoundly emotional experience in the very first session. If I do my job right, I will hold up the clearest mirror you’ve looked into—and give you the strength to acknowledge the reflection with courage and compassion. My goal is to allow you to understand yourself intimately, especially the parts of yourself you’ve suppressed or ignored (knowingly or not).
HOW AM I DIFFERENT?
I am convinced—and the scientific evidence is increasingly reflecting this—that many forms of mental “illness” that most everyday sufferers think and/or are told they have are not merely the result of individual neuropathology or biochemical imbalances, rather are deeply rooted in the inherent conditions of human existence, such as the challenges that accompany free will and responsibility, loss, and the awareness of mortality. Our suffering often arises from a failure to confront and make sense of these existential realities, especially during an age where curated online 'lives' force us into false comparisons. Questions about meaning, purpose, and identity can be deeply unsettling, and they cannot be addressed solely through biological or behavioral interventions.
why truly transformative experiences are rare.
Perhaps the fundamental aspects that enable a transformative bond in this context are often unteachable: creativity, intellect, insight, and the ability to invite trust. No amount of formal training in psychiatry, clinical psychology, psychotherapy, mental health counseling, and social work can inject these traits into a practitioner. This is partly why I was not helped by several psychotherapists—their training lacked any serious philosophical grounding, so I felt that they didn’t have access to the intellectual capital required to help resolve my existential crisis despite their technical/clinical acumen.
“Insanity—a perfectly rational adjustment to an insane world.”
freedom from labels.
Language and categories/labels can have a huge impact on a person’s self-perception: there’s a big difference, for instance, between being told that you are ambitious and being told you are suffering from delusions of grandeur. I will always use the former, but I will also challenge you to back it up with disciplined action. I don’t use any 'therapy speak,' and will often ban its use in our sessions altogether, encouraging you to articulate how you're feeling without any neat labels.
Book a session or read on to learn more about the inspiration behind my approach.
For the curious / philosophically inclined, below is an excerpt from Dr. M. G. Thompson, author of Essays in Existential Psychoanalysis:
Typically taken to mean that which pertains to the person’s experience, phenomenology is a discipline that arose around the same time Freud was formulating his treatment philosophy. Its method is devoted to subverting the over-conceptualization of human existence with which the modern era is identified by bracketing theoretical explanations and returning us, in our naiveté, to the ground of our native experience. According to Edie (1962),
Phenomenology is neither a science of objects nor a science of the subject; it is a science of experience. It does not concentrate exclusively on either the objects of experience or on the subject of experience, but on the point of contact where being and consciousness meet. It is, therefore, a study of consciousness as intentional, as directed towards objects, as living in an intentionally constituted world [i.e., one founded on intersubjectivity]. (p. 19)
Phenomenological inquiry differs from conventional scientific investigation in that science is not concerned with nor is it able to study experience; its manner of investigation is directed instead to objects of perception, the nature of which is said to exist independently of the person who conducts the investigation and whose reality is presumed to exist independently of the investigator. This is why science is unable to account for the experience of the person who engages in research because the person’s experience is (alleged to be) separated from and, consequently, inaccessible to the object of scientific investigation, no matter what the object may be, whether material, conceptual, imaginary, or interpersonal.
Diametrically opposed to this standard of investigation, phenomenology seeks to examine the nature of the world as experienced, whatever the object of inquiry may be, including one’s self, one’s thoughts, and one’s experience of others. In other words, instead of applying a theory that presumes to account for what is happening “in” the patient one is treating, the phenomenologist goes directly to the person himself, by examining his experience of his relationship with this person. This is not a matter of speculation but of determining the ground of experience at the moment it is transformed through the interhuman bond shared with others.
Following Husserl’s call to return to “the things themselves,” a generation of phenomenologists, including Martin Heidegger, Max Scheler, Jean-Paul Sartre, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Paul Ricoeur, and Immanuel Levinas set out to investigate their experience of the world in a radically different manner than the one to which scientists or philosophers were accustomed. According to Safranski (1998), Husserl and his followers
[W]ere on the lookout for a new way of letting the things approach them, without covering them up with what they already knew. Reality should be given an opportunity to “show” itself. That which showed itself, and the way it showed itself, was called “the phenomenon” by the phenomenologists. (p.72)
Ironically, phenomenology resists definition because, like experience itself, its method is antithetical to theoretical and causal explanation. Its point of departure is its rejection of the conceptualizing tendencies of the hard, human, and even social sciences. In the preface to his Phenomenology of Perception, Merleau-Ponty (1964) suggested that phenomenology is necessarily difficult to define because it,
[R]emains faithful to its nature by never knowing where it is going. The unfinished nature of phenomenology and the inchoative atmosphere that has surrounded it are not to be taken as a sign of failure; they were inevitable because phenomenology’s task was to reveal the mystery of the world and of reason. (p. xxi)
Phenomenology shares with psychoanalysis the view that explanation is inadequate to the task of understanding what is given to experience and shares with psychoanalytic treatment the task of determining the nature of suffering in a manner that does not objectify or categorize the sufferer. In other words, instead of posing the scientific question of what causes one to be this way or that, the phenomenologist asks, “What does it mean that I experience the world this way or that?” Once the meaning-question is substituted for that of causation one enters the realm of phenomenology, because in raising this question one accepts the inherent mystery of our existence, the puzzle of which has never been solved and is not likely to be. This feature of phenomenology (that the object of experience can never be decisively separated from the subject who experiences it) is both intentional and intersubjective, because my experience of the other person must remain unremittingly mine, with all its attendant ambiguity and baggage.