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Psychoanalysts once thought that maintaining an emotional distance was therapeutically necessary, ensuring their objectivity in working with patients. But things have changed a lot since Freud's time. Today many clinicians offer a more collaborative engagement, human being to human being. When it comes to helping people better access and cope with their feelings, make meaningful connections between the past and the present, and find greater satisfaction in their lives and relationships, psychoanalysis still very much values the deep work of the mind and the complexity of each individual’s history and private experience. But contemporary psychoanalytic therapy is also an ongoing, in-depth conversation between two people—one in which the experience of relating to others, including each other right there in the room, can become a meaningful resource and play an important role in addressing the problems that have brought a person into therapy in the first place.

I offer psychoanalytic psychotherapy to adult individuals and couples. That usually involves meeting one, two, or sometimes three times a week. My areas of special interest include: anxiety and depression; immigration and cross-cultural issues; adoption; mixed identities and "between-ness"; creativity and wellness; writers, artists, and academics. More generally, I am interested in the way culture and social context can very deeply affect individuals, especially with respect to our early and ongoing experiences of difference involving race, class, religion, gender, sexuality, and other categories. 

In addition to my private practice, I serve as Faculty and Supervisor at the National Institute for the Psychotherapies (NIP) and the Stephen Mitchell Relational Study Center, both in New York City. I am also on the Editorial Board of the Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association.

Contact me at 917-374-7304 or kbernsteinphd@gmail.com