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My Approach

By Michael Guy Thompson, PhD

 

One of the things that haunts me about our all too human condition is how much pain we have to suffer in the ordinary conduct of our lives. Who do we turn to when we are in such despair that we don’t know where to turn? I believe all of us suffer from occasional feelings of fear, alienation, depression, confusion. Some suffer from these symptoms more than others, but we are all otherwise more or less the same in how vulnerable we can be. I try to connect with your deepest existential issues and help you get to know yourself intimately, in order to bring the passion and happiness than has been missing back into your life… or perhaps, for the first time?

For more than thirty years I have worked with the full spectrum of distress and consternation that inspires many of us to seek psychotherapy. My approach is existential, which is a penetrating yet personal approach to therapy. I also work with borderline and psychotic symptoms, getting to the bottom of why a happy life of love and wonder is so elusive.

I am among the few psychoanalysts who integrate their work with the existential perspective, rooted in my training with R. D. Laing. I have published several books and numerous articles about my work over the past thirty years. You can access these publications as well as unpublished lectures under the PUBLICATIONS menu elsewhere on this website and download them for free.