As a child of British immigrants, I grew up in Ohio, near Akron and Cleveland. I attended Western College (Miami University) for my undergraduate degree in Interdisciplinary Studies. After graduation, I spent three years in the Chicago area working as an intensive case manager with severely mentally ill adults and as a research assistant working with homeless veterans struggling with substance abuse. I then entered the doctoral training program in clinical psychology at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland and I completed my pre-doctoral internship at the Harvard affiliated Massachusetts Mental Health Center just outside of Boston.
I spent the bulk of my professional career training clinical psychologists within the doctoral program at Central Michigan University. For nearly 20 years, I taught doctoral students how to conduct assessments, psychotherapy, and empirical research while I also maintained a part time private practice in the local community. In 2017 I moved to Spartanburg to join my wife who is a professor of psychology at Converse College.
I am excited to devote my efforts to providing psychotherapy and assessment services to the greater Spartanburg area. I also am delighted to continue teaching on a part time basis and recently taught Psychological Assessment at Wofford College.
I am especially excited to be working with the excellent counselors of Magnolia Counseling Associates!
Treatment Philosophy
In terms of my treatment approach, my style is warm, direct, and collaborative. I find that most issues that bring individuals to therapy are, at their core, about emotions and relationships. So, I spend a good deal of effort learning about patterns of emotional expression within current and important historical relationships. My approach is to seek immediate reduction of symptoms while creating a treatment pathway to address long-term, underlying problems.
I attempt to approach individual treatment with an open minded interest. It often takes a few sessions to arrive at a 'working' formulation to help us understand the nature of your concerns as well as my role to best help. I attempt to make this process as transparent as possible and I frequently share my understanding and evolving formulation in order to assure that both parties contribute to our collective work.
I have training in a variety of approaches to treatment, including cognitive-behavioral, Rogerian, and, most extensively in psychodynamic and interpersonal approaches to treatment. I strive to use various approaches as they best fit the concerns, temperament, and preferred focus of my client.
For example, some individuals have a strong desire for symptom relief and are less concerned with learning about the underlying patterns and emotional history that gave rise to their current distress. In such cases, more directive counseling can be effective in helping achieve important improvements in functioning and basic well-being. Targeted interventions for specific concerns are often provided within a time frame of one to three months.
More lasting symptom relief and personality change often requires exploration of deeply cherished beliefs about ourselves and those around us within the context of a meaningful and honest relationship with a therapist. The power of psychotherapy resides in the safety, acceptance, and courage found in the often difficult and painful exploration of personal history, current relationship patterns, and the unseen motivations which provide the default/autopilot behaviors and feelings we experience in our daily lives. The process of changing the automatic behaviors and experiences requires a longer time commitment and deeper exploration.
So, if can be helpful to think of treatment as involving (a) advice-giving and structured treatments intended to reduce symptomatic distress and/or (b) the more ambitious and difficult journey of self-exploration. Obviously, many of us would prefer the benefits of 'b' be attainable within the faster time frame of 'a'. Indeed, reduction of distress and important changes can often be seen within five to ten sessions. The patterns of behavior and emotional reactions which often give rise to the distress and immediate concerns change more gradually; say over the course of 20-40 sessions. Of course, these guidelines are generalities and each individual's history, severity of symptoms/disorders, and capacity for self-observation are among the key variables which affect rates of felt and observed change.
In my experience, the changes offered by psychotherapy often require six months to a year or longer to achieve. Psychotherapy appointments are typically conducted one to two times per week (though during periods of crisis, more frequent meetings may be warranted). Sessions less frequent that once per week are often appropriate for post treatment 'check ups' but are not typically successful in maintaining the momentum needed for change.