Larry Dettweiler
I am licensed as a Professional Clinical Mental Health Counselor in New Mexico. I received my BA in physics from the University of California, Berkeley in 1964 and my Ph.D. in child psychology from the Institute of Child Development, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis in 1971. People often ask me how I transitioned from hard science to working with children. I answer that question here. I have written on some of the other topics on this site and those papers are highlighted as links.
I have served as Treatment Director at a residential treatment center for children, consulting psychologist and group leader at a family violence project, taught developmental psychology and counseling skills to first nations people in Canada, led numerous workshops on child development and parenting, have been in private practice for over 50 years in Victoria, B.C., Seattle, Washington and Santa Fe, New Mexico. I was involved in post-secondary education as a teacher and administrator for over 30 years. I am in the business of facilitating change.
I met Susan Riley in high school in 1958 and we were married in 1964. We have two adult sons and five grandchildren. I am also a fourth degree black belt in Aikido and was founder and chief instructor at the Camosun College Aikido Club in Victoria, B.C. This experience led me to an interest in Japanese Psychology.
Today, my main interest lies in the union of depth psychology and developmental psychology. After over 40 years of experience working with children, adolescents and adults in settings as diverse as prison and preschool, I have come to the conclusion that the root of most psychological suffering is a discrepancy between who we really are and who we have been expected to become or expect ourselves and others to be. This discrepancy between the "Self" and the personality we develop causes immense suffering within individuals, between individuals and in the culture as a whole. My goal is to help clients find their own truth or "Self" as it is defined by Jung and Psychosynthesis and live their lives from that place. My task, as I see it, is to help others understand how the past has shaped the present and to understand how our direction for the future can be revealed by an understanding of the symbolic messages emanating from our individual psyches
Susan Riley
I received my B.A. in English Literature in 1982 and my M.A. in Counseling Psychology in 1993 from the University of Victoria in British Columbia, Canada. Throughout my studies, I have pursued questions concerning the nature and dynamics of the human psychological experience and the role of imagination, personal and universal symbology, mythology and meaning in our everyday life. These interest have become central to the work I do with my clients.
I have been in private practice as a counselor since 1982. For more than thirty years I have facilitated groups intended to provide participants with an opportunity to deepen their self-awareness and develop a relationship to their inner world, primarily through the exploration of dreams. I am currently a member of the American Counseling Association.
While I have experience and training in a variety of counseling methodologies, no single approach seems to me as capable of encompassing the complexities of the human experience as the depth approach of C.G. Jung. Like Dr.Jung, I believe that the psyche has a natural ability to heal itself - to come into a balance through resolution of oppositional conflict. These conflicts manifest themselves as symptoms such as emotional pain, recurring debilitating patterns of behavior, physical problems, etc.
My role in relation to this suffering is to provide a safe environment in which the client and I may explore the meaning behind the symptoms which have brought him or her into therapy. An essential part of this process is an exploration of the roots of the client's psychological reality or how the past manifests itself in the present conflict.
The therapeutic experience is different for everyone--client and counselor alike--and there is no way to predict how the process will unfold as we work towards bringing the conflict to a resolution. In addition to one-on-one counseling, I also provide supervision for counselors and therapists in private practice.
