Do you do on-line consultation and therapy?
Yes. I use Telehealth for your security. Telehealth is HIPPA compliant and confidential.
How do I make an appointment?
Call or text 415-359-4117 or email doctorvandendaele@gmail.com. Prospective clients (California only) are placed on a waiting list since appointments are usually full. Sessions for consultation are usually available within one to two weeks.
What are your fees?
The fee for psychotherapy is on a sliding scale from 200 to 225 dollars per hour. The fees for consultation on dreams, parenting, and vocational choice are 200 dollars per hour. Consultation is usually for a single hour. When appropriate, coaching may be advised, Coaching is usually short=term with a defined goal. The number of sessions are capped from 8 to 24. The cost per session is 200 dollars per hour.
Do you take insurance?
For out-of-network clients, I am happy to complete forms provided by the insurance company for your remuneration.
How do I make payment?
Payments by cash, check, PayPal, or credit card are made at the conclusion of video or face-to-face sessions.
What is psychoeducation?
Psychoeducation is the identification of causes and influences that affect subjective, objective, or interpersonal states of mind and behavior. Psychoeducation may highlight the role of physical, environmental, and social influences on health and well-being. Psychoeducation is a valuable adjunct to psychological or behavioral treatment. Psychoeducation, treatment, or referral follows clinical evaluation or assessment.
What is Interpersonal Psychoanalysis?
Different theories of psychoanalysis give different weights to biological, evolutionary, interpersonal, social, and cultural influences on emotional and mental well-being. Interpersonal psychoanalysis gives equal weight to interpersonal, social and cultural influences as it does to biological and evolutionary influences. Research in neurology, functional magnetic resonance, linguistics, and multidisciplinary studies underscore the role and importance of Integral or wholistic psychoanalysis.
What is unique to your approach to assessment and therapy?
The human brain, an organ that weighs roughly 3 pounds, is magnificently complex. Areas of the brain may be divided based upon anatomy or function. Depending upon how fine-tuned the functional analysis, as many as 200 functional neural cell assemblies may be identified connected to specific sensory, perceptual, recognitory, memory, speech, or cognitive functions. The number is undoubtedly higher and more functions tied to specific brain areas are likely to be identified in the future. However cell assemblies rarely, if ever, function alone, but almost always in concert with other assemblies. An assembly serves as a “hub”. A hub serves as node that connects and interacts with other hubs. Connections and interactions between and among hubs waxes and wanes in real time. This activity among connected hubs constitutes a network. A network may be either major or minor. Large scale networks nest smaller networks. The activity of networks is responsible for experience, mental activity, and consciousness itself.
Recent neurological research has focused upon network activity, much of which has been identified with the “default network”. This mega network contrasts, for example, with the “executive network”. The default network operates in the background of awareness and may be witnessed, however obliquely, in resting states and daydreams, particularly when one is not thinking about anything specific at all. The default network is a network (or set of networks) that underlie conscious awareness, inspiration, and deliberation.
Mutative therapy, therapy that makes a difference, is attuned to the default network and its organizing role in conscious thought and preoccupation. My therapeutic practice is oriented to bringing to light the operation and biases of this network while mirroring to the client incompatibilities or conflicts with the executive network. I have developed special tools, the Executive Judgement Inventory and the Music Apperception Test, to assess the operation of the default and executive networks to facilitate accurate identification of mental and emotional blockages and stalemates .
My on-the-ground approach is informed by Karen Horney’s style of direct interpretation. I use plain language and identify defense for what it is. This is a therapeutic approach that ushers in quick and lasting benefits.
What’s special about Karen Horney’s approach to psychotherapy and psychoanalysis?
Karen Horney wrote in plain English, and so her approach to psychological issues is accessible to an average person. An excellent introduction to her work is found in her book “The Neurotic Personality of Our Time”. In this book, Horney views personality issues as inextricably bound-up with cultural roles, definitions, and expectations. Since Horney published her book in 1952, cultural and social expectations only have grown more complex and often confused.
Although not generally known, Karen Horney’s theory inspired Albert Ellis and his Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT). REBT was the immediate forerunner to CBT. Soon after he completed his PhD, Ellis was analyzed and supervised by a Karen Horney trained psychoanalyst. Albert Ellis took from Karen Horney’s theory the use of plain English and her use of direct “interpretation of defense”. Defense is how a person wards off feelings, emotions, perceptions, ideas, or memories incompatible with the self’s biases. In Horney’s approach to therapy, irrational beliefs, cognitive distortions, and the like are readily identified and challenged.
How do Horney’s approach to therapy and REBT/CBT differ?
What’s different is attention to processes that underlie behavior and well-being that reside outside of conscious awareness. These processes are deeply rooted in personal history and systemically linked to perception, thought, and behavior. The processes of mental life are interdependent, so conscious and unconscious are inextricably connected. The foundation of the self is laid in early childhood experience and socialization although later disillusionment, vicarious and/or real trauma may further impact health. Psychoanalytic psychotherapy and psychoanalysis address the deep structure as well as the surface structure of the self. The result is alleviation of symptoms and knowledge of one’s self. This provides the secure ground to understand and engage life experience and change.
May I telephone or video for consultation?
I provide consultation for adults and parents on dreams, life issues, and transitions. Since I am a developmental clinical psychologist, I have experience and the knowledge base to consult on matters pertaining to infancy, childhood, adolescence, adult, and later life issues. Issues range from parenting methods, adolescent rebellion, anxiety/ambivalence about relationships, divorce to identity. Since I am a psychoanalyst, I have decades of experience with the meaning and significance of dreams.
Consultation is available through HIPPA compliant video conferencing for single or multiple sessions. Following an appointment, I provide a secure video link to my office at doxy.me. A session is 50 minutes in length and the cost is 150 US dollars.
Can I call you to consult about a single issue or a single dream?
Yes. If you are requesting consultation about a life issue, life transition, or interpretation of a dream’s meaning and significance, a brief description of the life issue, transition, or dream may be sent to my secure email prior to meeting to facilitate consultation and use of time. I provide my secure email address at the time of appointment. All communications are confidential except those excluded by law (see Documents).
How do I make an appointment?
You may call me to make an appointment at 415-359-4117.
What’s the difference in training between a psychologist and a psychoanalyst?
In addition to the training to be a psychologist, training to be a psychoanalyst takes another 5 to 6 years. This includes 3 to 4 years of coursework, personal analysis, and 200 hours of direct supervision of clinical work by senior psychoanalysts. The training provides a strong foundation for understanding the inner world and life experience of others, as well as skill in diagnosis and psychological treatment.
How do I decide on type of treatment?
At the time of our initial meeting, and sometimes after two meetings, based on a clinical interview and assessment, I will make a recommendation for the types of treatment. The type of treatment usually depends upon the presenting problem. Sometimes, no presenting problem exists, and therapy is undertaken for personal growth and development.
Does short-term psychoanalytic psychotherapy require the client to recline on the couch?
No, the therapy does not require the client to recline, but the couch can be used to promote relaxation and facilitate access to the neural default network to reveal the constant “background chatter” of the brain-mind. Thereby, the use of the couch can speed access to unconscious concerns and processes. Access to this knowledge reveals the “inner world”, expands consciousness, and self-discovery.