More about Mark

I received my Masters degree in Clinical Social Work from Simmons College School of Social Work in Boston, Massachusetts in 1986.  I also received a graduate diploma  from the C.G. Jung Institute in Zurich, Switzerland in 1993, and I am certified as a Jungian Analyst.  I hold a Bachelor of Arts in philosophy and theology from Boston College, where I graduated in 1979.   I am a licensed clinical social worker in the state of Oregon.   I have more than 25 years of clinical practice.

CLINICAL  PRACTICE

I am currently in full time private practice.  My practice includes psychotherapy and analysis with individuals, couples, and families, and group therapy for adults and late adolescents. I have particular interest, experience, and specialized training in working with symbolic content, such as dreams, pictures, guided imagery, therapeutic enactments, and role-playing. 

Clinical Focus

In my work with clients, I primarily use psychodynamic, object relations, and depth psychology approaches and techniques, including a  focus on transference and counter transference as  constructive tools in the therapy.  These interpersonal dynamics are very useful in identifying blocks or resistances to development, as well as in working with such blocks to further appropriate growth for the client.  I am also very interested in working with symbolic content in relations to complex trauma and dissociative states, and the therapeutic challenges of addictions and compulsions.  Finally, I am actively involved in teaching courses and leading seminars on these topics.

Clinical Experience

As a practicing therapist in clinic settings, I have worked in inpatient psychiatric units, a psychiatric day-treatment center, a university counseling center, a variety of state correctional institutions (with both male and female inmates), a community mental health center, and hospital emergency departments.  Within these contexts, I have performed assessments and evaluations for psychiatric and addiction and compulsion problems, conducted short- and long-term psychotherapy, developed cognitive and behavioral change plans, implemented a variety of group therapies, directed crisis evaluation and crisis intervention, and conducted individual and group supervision, and performed as a manager of clinical practitioners.

Clinical Training

My clinical training has been eclectic, both theoretically and experientially, which reflects my natural curiosity, non-dogmatic thinking, multi-disciplinary approach, empathic sensibilities, reflective nature, and the variety of my personal and professional interests.  I have worked with many kinds of people who have presented a wide range and varying degree of psychiatric and psychological issues and problems. 

Clinical Style

I am quite engaging in my interactions with my clients, and I try very hard to attune myself to their conscious and unconscious communications.  I deeply value the relationship  between client and therapist in psychotherapy, and I am very attentive to the ways in which my clients relate to me, how I relate to my clients, and how my clients employ my presence as a tool in their therapeutic process.

Summary

The best summary of my clinical approach is that I do what works best to help my clients improve their overall level of functioning. I know how to intervene with clients in a multitude of ways because I am comfortable with complexity, both conceptually and practically. I am able to grapple in a deep level with my own awareness and understanding of a particular client, and in a multidimensional manner, creatively intervene with that client.  At the same time, I am very willing and able to be simple, direct, practical, and immediate in my interventions. 

 

SUPERVISION  BACKGROUND AND APPROACH

I currently provide clinical supervision for interns from  various clinical disciplines and experienced practitioners, as well as collaborating and consulting with clinical colleagues regarding the knowledge, skills, ethics, and professional role of clinical supervision.  

Supervision Training

I have personally experienced a variety of types of clinical supervision, often specific to the clinical setting that I was working in.

• I first worked on an inpatient psychiatric unit more than 25 years ago. My supervision focused on developing my ability to observe various serious psychiatric signs and symptoms, to differentiate them according to various disorders, to develop basic counseling skills, and to intervene with patients in routine, daily situations, as well as acute crisis circumstances.
• During my first-year internship in social work graduate school, I worked at a day-treatment center with people with chronic major mental illness. My supervisor used a psychiatric rehabilitation model, which was cognitively and behaviorally based. 
• My second-year internship was at a university counseling center, and  my supervisors used a psychodynamic model. There was a wall-sized picture of Sigmund Freud in the conference room that always let the staff know what the reigning paradigm was.
• In my work in state prisons, the supervision focused on assessing and managing acute psychiatric emergencies, medication assessments, and short- and long-term psychotherapy, primarily with inmates with personality disorders.  I also worked as a supervisor and manager of a clinical team in this setting.
• In my almost five years of training  to be a Jungian analyst, individual and group supervision was focused primarily on working with symbolic content such as dreams, fantasies, pictures, and such processes as transference and countertransference  issues, and the parts of  clients that emerge through such manifestations of symbolic processes. These early clinical experiences laid the initial framework for my approach to supervision, both as a supervisee and as a supervisor. 

Supervision Approach

Since my early clinical and supervisory experiences some 20 years ago, I have regularly served as a clinical supervisor and I have also participated in various seminars and groups to continually improve my clinical supervision knowledge and skills.  My framework for supervision is on the one hand pragmatic, as I focus on what actually works for the supervisee and their respective clients, and on the other hand psychodynamic, as I focus on helping my supervisees understand and be able to work with the inner world of their clients.

• My supervision approach is based on developmental models of supervision. I consider the supervisory relationship to be a central component of supervision, and I give special attention to the dynamics of the working relationship between the supervisee and myself, comparing our individual information-processing styles and skills, and working with the ways in which each supervisee conceptualizes the cases under consideration. 
• One of my primary goals in supervision is to help my supervisees work with the symbolic content of their clients and themselves.  In addition, I want very much for each of my supervisees to find his or her own unique therapeutic style or “embodied voice.”  Thus, my aim is to provide a safe, supportive, and challenging container where the supervisee can grow in self awareness, clinical knowledge, clinical skills, and self-generating creativity.
• In order to further the development of the supervisee, I intentionally assume varied roles in the supervisory relationship. I may variously act as an educator, a case consultant, or a therapist, according to the needs of the supervisee and his or her clients. Through this process, I encourage and challenge my supervisees to refine their unique, personal styles of psychotherapy, within the standards of professional ethics and best practice guidelines. 
• My direct observation of therapeutic skills and case conceptualization are accomplished through face-to-face supervision, using primarily individual and group supervision methods and, when appropriate and available, the aid of audio and/ or videotape review, live observation, and process notes.

If you have any questions about my experience or practice as a clinician and a supervisor, please feel free to contact me directly.