About Our Practice
Chapel Hill Psychoanalytic Practice is a husband and wife psychotherapy practice near the UNC campus. Our secluded office surrounded by woods was formerly an artist’s sunlit studio. As a couple, we have a myriad of backgrounds which include music, education, politics, philosophy, theology, medicine, obstetrics & gynecology, psychiatry, and marriage and family therapy. We each have trained rigorously in psychoanalysis resulting in graduation from the local Institute and subsequent certification by the American Psychoanalytic Association. More importantly, we have lots of children, know about divorce, and have two Chesapeake Bay Retrievers– Bayley and Wilbur. Our dogs give us some of our best insights into relationships by factoring out language, culture and human pretentiousness.
We know that life can be very difficult. We also believe that therapeutic relationships heal and lead to mental health which we define as the ability to love, work and play despite the difficulties we encounter. We work to help people feel better quickly, but we prefer a broader sense of growth that goes beyond symptom-relief. At first, growth may bring painful thoughts and feelings. We take this long term view and are less interested in the circumscribed fix that ignores the larger picture. For example, the person who cannot sustain a relationship or job might need to stay in therapy past the resolution of their panic attacks. The workaholic might need to learn to play before relief of their depression allows them to work even harder.
This long term, wider view is more the perspective of psychoanalysis than other types of therapy. We employ the relational approach to psychoanalysis in contrast to the traditional stance on psychoanalysis which emphasizes the analyst’s reserve and neutrality. This blank screen from the past exuded a religious orthodoxy that ignored research and common sense. Our sense of psychoanalysis includes solid boundaries but uses the therapy relationship to help the patient gain a deepening and broader freedom in their thinking (e.g., mentalization theory of Peter Fonagy) and relating (e.g., Boston Change Process Study Group).
Psychological pathology can be understood in terms of excessive unconscious or affective pressure on the mind to the point that we get locked into restricted thinking that does not allow for alternatives. This limitation leads repeatedly to getting it wrong with others, as well as to having difficulty dealing with the ebbs and flows of relationships. The therapy relationship can be a safer place to allow such repetitions to occur and thereby understand and resolve the box in which we find ourselves. The therapist cannot model flexibility of thinking if he thinks he is always right. We believe that uncertainty is a part of life. We work hard at reducing our pretentiousness and prefer the stance of not knowing.
One of us heard this story: a person dreamed that they stood at a bus-stop as a bus stopped by. On the bus was their therapist speaking to them but they could only read the therapist’s lips through the glass. Their therapist was saying “it is all connected.” We invite you onto this bus. Your symptoms showed you the way to the bus-stop and we hope to help by accompanying you on your journey. With our diverse backgrounds, we are not sure, but we hope that everything is connected somehow. We would like to try to help to make these connections with our patients through our own myriad experiences of the sacred, of art and music, of scientific exploration, of politics, and of our life experiences. We believe that therapy can help you connect more together than you could ever imagine in your solitary reflections. We realize that the ride can be bumpy, expensive and without easy answers but, like life itself, is worth it. It is one thing to try to read lips from a bus stop and another, finally, after long deliberation, to get on the bus and begin the journey.
