My view is that we are meant to flourish, to contribute our best selves in the service of others. All too often we are led to believe that we are smaller. That our biological or our economic status to determine who we are. The bottom line is elevated to an extreme view that does not allow the commonweal to thrive. In this climate our health, physical or mental, is reduced to the absence of symptoms.

There can be no doubt that our neurobiology, our psychology, our cultural practices may lead to profound disturbances. These disturbances, these symptoms can act as barriers to a meaningful life. However, if we wait for medication our clinical psychotherapy to get rid of our disturbances and symptoms we may have a considerable and costly wait. If these treatments are successful we may find ourselves languishing rather than flourishing. What if our disturbances and symptoms are not only the result of biological and environmental factors, but also a result of not living life on purpose.

Could it be that “neurosis” is a failure to grow into the persons that we can become?

There can be no doubt that our disturbances and symptoms may require psychiatric medication and evidence based psychological treatments.I continue to train in evidence based treatments and am willing to refer patients to psychiatrists for medication that helps you live your values. However, research has found that when these methods are used it is possible to move people from a place of poor mental health to a state of non-mental health. That is to say, if a person with depression scores a minus 10 on a measure of clinical depression medication and targeted interventions can move that person to a 0. 0 is not a place I want to live. These patients used words like meaninglessness, aimlessness, and emptiness to describe their mental health. In our existing healthcare industry, treatment is over when a patient is a 0.

How long can a person remain at 0 before disturbances and symptoms return? The answer turns out to be not to long.

Psychotherapy can invite a person to participate in a process of self-renewal that lasts a life time.Psychotherapy can encourage people to sustain their efforts to overcome the inevitable problems life throws at us. Psychotherapy can encourage persons to feel courage in the face of various adversities. Psychotherapy can make coping/overcoming chronic disturbances, symptoms, illnesses, inferiorities, and social problems honorable as one sees ones values come to their fruition.

If such a vision of psychotherapy has appeal to youplease look at the other pages on this site and see if I have a service that meets your values.