Beginning analysis is itself something to speak about. What brings you to this moment may be simple to state, or the convergence of several threads not yet woven. Most people arrive with some sense of what they hope to work on. This is a place to speak fully about that hope, and to discover how it might shape the work ahead.
Often analysis begins because something is not working: a pattern keeps returning, a relationship has become difficult, a question won’t resolve. The question itself is often deceptively simple — why does this keep happening? But to speak about what repeats is to open onto other questions: what does this pattern make possible, as well as difficult? What hasn’t yet been said? This is often where a pattern’s hold begins to loosen.
Speaking has an effect. We can hear ourselves differently. A thought can be returned to, extended, contradicted, or connected to something else. New articulations and associations can shift what seemed familiar or fixed — changing how we experience something, and where we find ourselves in relation to it and to others.
Sometimes I’m asked to speak briefly by phone first. A call can offer the relief of being heard, and the hope that something might change — both real, both worth having. But a first encounter with analysis can offer something more: a chance to listen beyond the ways we’re used to feeling understood, to something in your own words that surprises you.
This is why I begin with a 60-minute consultation (90 for couples). The extra time leaves room for something to emerge that wasn’t apparent going in. The consultation isn’t an assessment, and it isn’t aimed at an explanation — it’s a first experience of a different kind of speaking, and a chance to discover how the work might proceed.
For couples, the additional time allows each to speak and be heard by the other, so that what happens between them enters the conversation too.
If you’re considering analysis, the consultation is a place to begin.
Engaging in Analysis
It can help to meet several times before deciding whether to continue — not to arrive at a decision, but to find out what begins to happen when there’s time to speak, listen, and return to what’s been said.
Psychoanalytic work makes a different use of time. Rather than moving toward a solution, time lets something unfold on its own terms. A thought can be followed rather than concluded. A story you’ve told many times can start to sound different — and that shift is often where movement begins. A dream, a memory, a remark made in passing — any of these can open onto something you didn’t expect.
The work asks for time, attention, and a willingness to stay curious about what emerges — including what doesn’t yet make sense. What seemed fixed can turn out not to be.
Frequency and Continuity
For individual analysis, I recommend meeting at least twice a week. Regularity and continuity are what make this different use of time possible. Couples may also benefit from meeting more than once a week, when this can be arranged.
When sessions are less frequent, much of the time can go to catching up. When there is greater continuity, there’s more room to speak freely—to follow a thought, return to something said before, share a dream or a fantasy, notice what’s taking shape. And what’s said, remembered, dreamed, or left unsaid between sessions doesn’t disappear. It continues to operate, and over time these threads can return, connect, and let a pattern unfold rather than merely being discussed.
Frequency is discussed during the consultation, with attention to what you’re hoping for and what you can sustain.
Session Length
Sessions aren’t a fixed length. I ask that we set aside an hour; within it, the session finds its own length, following the thoughts that emerge and point toward something worth noticing.
When something arrives that lands — that opens a thought in a new way — it can be useful to end there, and let it unfold between sessions. Sometimes that’s where the session was going all along. The variable session isn’t meant to rush you or to withhold time; it’s a way of giving weight to the work you’re engaged with and letting it take its own course.
Fees
I don’t participate with insurance and don’t bill it directly.
The fee is worth thinking about as part of deciding whether this work is right for you. Money enters the work from the start — in what you value, what you expect, what feels possible to ask for, or difficult to receive. These aren’t separate from the work; they can be spoken about as they arise, at the beginning and throughout.
Because analysis unfolds over time, fee and frequency need to be sustainable together.
Fees are discussed during the consultation.
An Opening
What you don’t yet know about yourself isn’t a problem to be solved—it is what the work is made of. Learning to listen to it without rushing it toward meaning is its own kind of freedom.
That listening begins with a thought, spoken aloud and followed to see where it leads. To give a thought time, to stay with what emerges, and to discover where it takes you — this can change what seemed familiar, and open possibilities that weren’t visible before. With that, one’s sense of who they are can begin to feel more their own, less shaped by the pressures that have come to organize their lives.