Referral Service for Psychoanalysis and Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy

Referral Service for Psychoanalysis and Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy

Serving San Francisco, Marin, the South Bay, the East Bay & Sacramento
Referral Service Contact number: (415) 857-6988 (confidential voicemail)

What is Psychoanalysis/Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy?

Psychoanalysis is a method of treatment that offers a way of understanding ourselves, our relationships, and how we conduct ourselves in the world. Psychoanalysis helps people learn how they became who they are and why they do and feel the things they do. This understanding paves the way towards the emotional freedom necessary to make substantive, lasting changes.

Psychoanalysis is based on the observation that people are often unaware of the many underlying factors that influence their current emotions and behavior. Unconscious conflicts can create disharmony, unhappiness and inhibition that can often be observed through difficulties in work, relationships and characteristic ways of being in the world.

The value of psychoanalytic treatment lies in the long-term, consistent relationship with someone – the analyst or psychotherapist – who works to understand us, accept us for who we are, and who helps us with our struggles.

Psychoanalysis involves meeting multiple times per week with the analyst to deepen our access to unconscious processes that influence our perceptions and behavior.To learn more, go to: https://apsa.org/content/about-psychoanalysis

How does Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy differ from Psychoanalysis?

Psychoanalytic psychotherapy is based on the same ideas of helping people understand themselves and their inner life, but it is a less intensive form of analytic treatment where patients meet with their therapist only once or twice a week.

Who Can Benefit From an Analytic Treatment?

Psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic psychotherapy are especially suited for those who need to get to the root of long-term problems and patterns. Some people come to analytic treatment because of repeated difficulties in work or love brought about, not by chance, but by self-defeating patterns of behavior. Others come, because the way they have evolved to be in the world (i.e. due to trauma, poor relationship models, anxiety, and depression, etc) –substantially limits their freedom and their ability to enjoy life. Still others seek analytic treatment to definitively resolve psychological problems that were only temporarily or partially resolved by other forms of treatment.

One of the most common reasons for entering analytic treatment is the problem of finding and maintaining stable and loving relationships.

Who Can Benefit From an Analytic Treatment?

People who are capable of having and using insights and are able to tolerate intense, difficult feelings that can arise during treatment, are likely to be able to benefit from psychoanalytically informed treatments. While psychoanalysis may not be for everyone, almost anyone suffering from psychological symptoms can benefit from psychoanalytic psychotherapy.

Psychoanalytic Treatment Can Help You:

  • Get relief from painful feelings
  • Improve personal relationships
  • Become more productive at work
  • Take more pleasure from life
  • Prevent the past from interfering with the present.
  • End problematic patterns of behavior.
  • Gain greater control over life
  • Unlock creative potential
  • Understand yourself
  • Feel understood

For those seeking Psychoanalytic Treatment

Call the Referral Service at: 415-857-6988 to leave a confidential voice message.

The Referral Service will return your call to answer your questions and if appropriate, an evaluation over the phone will be done and a referral to a clinician will be made.

Upcoming Events

Saturday, June 14, 2025
Dialogues in Contemporary Psychoanalysis
Listening Into Being: An Actor’s Invitation
Robin Weigert in Conversation with Kristin Fiorella
Fridays, September 5, 2025 to May 29, 2026
Extension Education Programs
2025-2026 East Bay Yearlong Program: Tuning into the Unspoken: Navigating the Landmarks of Unconscious Experience
Eric Miller, PhD; Elizabeth Stuart, MD; Graeme Daniels, LMFT; Marty Mulkey, LMFT; Chandra Rai, LMFT; and Luciane De Mello, LCSW
Saturday, September 6, 2025
Dialogues in Contemporary Psychoanalysis
Event title to be announced
Hannah Zeavin (presenter)
Fridays, September 26, 2025 to May 8, 2026
Extension Education Programs
2025-2026 San Francisco Yearlong Program: Continuous Case Conference
J. Marc Wallis, LCSW; Paul Alexander, PhD; Genie Dvorak, PsyD; Bronwen Lemmon, LMFT; and Walt Beckman, PhD (case conference group leaders)
Saturday, September 27, 2025
Transformation, Creativity, and the Aesthetic Experience
Notions of Psychoanalytic Transformation in the Clinical Setting: Case Presentations from a Jungian and Contemporary Object Relations Perspective
Henry Markman, MD; and Sandy Pepper, MD (speakers)
Mondays, September 29 to October 20, 2025
Coalition for Clinical Social Work
CCSW mini-Module: Working with Parents: A Complex and Essential Component of Child Psychotherapy
Lea Brown, LCSW, and Amy Wallerstein Friedman, LCSW (instructors)
Saturday, October 4, 2025
Scientific Meetings
THE RADICAL OTHERNESS OF MASUD KHAN
Ilene Philipson, PhD, PhD (presenter); Charles Fisher, MD (moderator)
Wednesdays, October 15, 2025 to May 27, 2026
Extension Education Programs
2025-2026 Seasoned Clinicians Program
 Jeffrey Sandler, MD; Clara Kwun, LCSW; Mark Swoiskin, MD; Jeanne Harasemovitch, LCSW; Michael Wagner, PhD, MFT; Joanna Wise-Bradman, LCSW, Dorian Newton, PhD; and Catherine Mallouh (leaders)
Saturday, October 18, 2025
Transformation, Creativity, and the Aesthetic Experience
Notions of Creativity in the Clinical Setting: Case Discussions from Jungian and Contemporary Object Relations Perspectives
Jan Ole Luuk, LLM (presenter); Robert Grossmark, PhD, ABPP; and Paul Watsky, PhD, ABPP (discussants)
Saturday, October 25, 2025
Child Colloquium Series
Learning to Surf: Analyzing Adolescents
Mary Brady, PhD (presenter); Jill Sallberg, PhD, ABPP (discussant)
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