Individual Therapy:  Sessions are 50 to 80 minutes long except for the initial interview. There we want to get an in-depth view of your difficulties so that we can understand the causes as rapidly as possible. For this initial interview, you'll need to set aside 3 hours.
 
As far as style, I'm active throughout the session in questioning you and giving you feedback about personality style, defense, and resistance. Together we'll try to make sense of why you're having difficulties and outline what we can do about it. I'm committed to working as efficiently and as rapidly as possible so that you spend no more time in therapy than is necessary.
 
I also offer the option of videotaping our meetings and strongly encourage this as both a "quality control" measure and a way of deepening the therapeutic process. Videotaping can increase the value of therapy but is in no way a requirement of our working together. [After being used for their intended purpose, the tapes are erased and do NOT become part of your medical record.]

Couples Therapy:  We need to do a thorough assessment of relationship strengths and weaknesses so that the areas we target are not based on guesswork. With this in mind, we will have 4 sessions devoted solely to information gathering. Our first session (80 to 85 minutes) will be spent exploring each of your hopes and fears about therapy; the history of your relationship; and some areas of current difficulty. At the end of this first session, I will give each of you a detailed questionnaire to complete on your own and bring back to an individual session.

During your individual session (50 to 55 minutes), we will discuss your individual history as well as any other topics you consider relevant. Once I've reviewed the completed questionnaires, we'll schedule a second couples meeting to go over the treatment plan and jointly decide which issues to give our immediate attention. I recommend a 10 session commitment after the assessment period. As with individual therapy, videotaping is strongly encouraged.