Gary Seeman, Ph.D.
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  1. Home
  2. Individual Psychotherapy
  3. Marriage and Couples Therapy
  4. Grief and Loss
  5. Creativity and Writer's Block
  6. Spiritual and Religious Issues
  7. How I Work
  8. Theoretical Orientation
  9. Writing and Resources
    1. Getting the Most Out of Psychotherapy
    2. The Transformative Power of Dreams
    3. My Dissertation on Jung's Kundalini Seminar
  10. My Background
  11. Office Directions
  12. Calendar Openings
  13. Fees and Insurance

No charge for initial therapy consult,* which is arranged through a telephone conversation. Reasonable, sliding scale fees.

 

Phone: 415.271.2350

E-mail Dr. Seeman

Note: Given the quirkiness of cell phones and electronic communications, your phone number may not come through on my voicemail. If I don't call you back, please try again or request a call by e-mail. I check voice and e-mail messages daily and respond reliably.

Office visits only. Why I don't offer online or phone therapy.

San Francisco Office & Mailing Address

582 Market St., Suite 715, San Francisco, CA 94104

 

Marin County Office

100 Tamal Plaza, Suite 100, Corte Madera, CA 94925


For directions, see Locations.


My Background

Therapist as Wounded Healer

Psychotherapists gain empathy for their clients’ concerns through life experiences. Some of the experiences that have added depth to my work include:

Education

Clinical Training

I've had a variety of training experiences for my academic degrees, which are listed below:

9/2002 - 8/2003: Psychological assistantship with Ann Bernhardt, Ph.D., Mill Valley. Addressed individuation, bereavement, aging and related medical concerns, and characterological aspects of Mood Disorders. The work was informed by cognitive, solution-focused, and depth psychological theories, with the latter including Jungian and psychodynamic approaches. Depth psychological training included applications of dreamwork, attending to the transference and the interactive field (relational aspects of therapy), characterological assessment and crisis intervention. Collaborated with medicating psychiatrists. Dr. Bernhardt still serves as a consultant. (For Internet searchers, her current phone number is 415 383-6068).

9/2001 - 9/2002: Post-doctoral fellowship at Kaiser Permanente Psychiatric Services, San Rafael. Offered individual, couples and family therapy, facilitated groups for teens and their families, elderly adults, and body-mind group (pain management with Buddhist psychology focus). Other duties included crisis on-call, intakes, initial assessment for medication, and psychological testing. Emphasis on brief therapy, but some work was medium-term.

8/2000 - 6/2001: Internship at Santa Rosa Junior College Student Psychological Services (SPS), Santa Rosa, CA. Conducted drop-in, brief and long-term therapy with individuals and couples, facilitated relationship group, wrote and delivered outreach presentations on relationships, addictions, career. Assisted faculty and campus police with crisis intervention. Clients were students and their partners in late teens to late fifties, multi-racial and ethnic. Worked with relationship and identity issues, addictions, anxiety and mood disorders, and anger management.

6/98 - 10/99: Internship and practicum at Center Point, Inc., San Rafael, CA, providing adult residential substance abuse treatment. Approximately half of clients were mandated by the criminal justice system, about a third had dual diagnoses. Provided individual and group therapy, and facilitated recreational activities. Led ongoing groups for men's issues and grief and loss. Helped assess dual diagnosis clients via clinical interviews and psychological testing.

While pursuing psychology education and training, I earned a living as an award-winning, marketing and technology writer and editor. Lack of funds and regulatory time limitations on license eligibility under my master's degree required me to abandon licensure under that degree. I had to regroup and return to the field 15 years later. My earlier psychological and medical experience and education includes:

5/83 - 10/83:  Volunteer, Langley Porter Psychiatric Institute, San Francisco, CA.  Volunteered at the crisis clinic.

4/30 - 3/81:  Intern, the Way Home Community Counseling Center, San Francisco, CA. Co-therapist with individual adult clients and their families, did intake interviews, participated in therapist training group.

1968: Volunteer work with developmentally disabled youngsters at Southbury Training School in Connecticut.

Independent Education and Personal Growth

My work as a psychologist is also informed by my spiritual practice, my personal experience in psychotherapy, and the education and training experiences I've pursued independently.

7/07: 10-day meditation retreat with Lama Kunzang Rinpoche of the Kagyu lineage of Tibetan Buddhism at The Hermitage, Denman Island, BC, Canada. This was a Mahamudra (Great Seal) retreat investigating the nature of mind, a very profound experience that is a core teaching of this lineage headed by H. H. Gyalwa Karmapa, XVII. Nine days of this retreat were in silence.

9/02: 12-day meditation retreat with Swami Chandrasehkharanand Saraswati, the head of a 500-year-old oral lineage of Kundalini Yoga. This was the experiential culmination of my dissertation research on the Kundalini Seminars of C. G. Jung. Received expert guidance in spiritual practices, which does not involve becoming a member of that lineage. For more information about these retreats, select this link for PKYC.

10/98 - 9/01: Analytic psychotherapy with Pan Coukoulis, Ph.D., including clinical case consultation, dreamwork, interactive field.

(Dates of the following experiences are approximate, as I best remember them.)

10/88 - 11/94: Six-year analysis with the late Donald Sandner, M.D., author, training analyst and former president of the C.G. Jung Institute of San Francisco. Learned dreamwork, reconnected with emotions, developed ability to contain emotional conflicts and work them through, tapped deeper creativity. Included work with shadow, mid-life transition, relationships, family issues, thinking/feeling split, work pressure and substance abuse.

1/85 - 8/85: Completed 23-day certification training in Neuro-Linguistic Programming™ with Grinder, Delozier and Associates. That training provided NLP™ Practitioner certification for two years. Although I have not renewed my certification, NLP training increased my sensitivity to the subtleties of spoken and body language and helped me refine my ability to do guided imagery.

1980-81: Presented group process model of indoctrination to the late Margaret Singer, Ph.D. and cult exit counselors group (where I was a participant) at invitation of Philip Cushman, Ph.D.

1979-81: Heartsong Advanced Clairvoyant Reading and Healing Program. After my spiritual awakening of 1977, my first spiritual teacher, Rev. Dr. Patrick Young, advised me to train at Heartsong. This is where I learned to perceive the human aura. During this time, I also trained briefly in spiritual healing with Greg Schelkun and Bill Torvund. (Greg can be reached these days at (415) 459-0680. Bill's website is: http://www.billtorvund.com/.

1975-78: I first began to look inward as a participant in the Human Potential Movement, including several est seminars, where I first became aware of the reality of intuitive perception beyond the usual sensory modalities.

Professional Affiliations

Awards

* All initial appointments are arranged through a brief phone call so I can get a general sense of the issues you're addressing. I also ask questions to make sure that your needs are likely to fit within my scope of practice (areas of training and expertise). If those issues are outside my scope of practice, instead of meeting, I try to offer referrals to therapists or community resources with the appropriate specialization. 24-hour notice is required to reschedule the no-charge visit once only.

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For Self-Discovery, Better Relationships, Peace of Mind.SM Psychologist PSY19356