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Over the course of one's counseling career, one's practice takes
on a distinctive character as the people with whom you work most effectively gravitate toward you.
Generally my
clients are “pilgrims”—people unlikely to find a place to settle comfortably within convention, who have
to get the hang of living successfully in the interstices of society. My clientele is heavily weighted toward artists, intellectuals,
musicians, left-leaning iconoclasts, and knowledge workers.
I’m very good with the exceptionally intelligent.
I don't think having a high IQ makes one better than others, but it does create special problems, obligations, and opportunities,
and one's counselor needs to understand those. I've come to believe that having a counselor less intelligent than one's self
is a recipe for something between uselessness and disaster.
People who tend to think for themselves, including
those who tend toward skepticism, tend to find me helpful. A satisfactory life doesn't depend on adopting some prescribed
set of ideas or stance toward life.
Since I am sensitive to the ethical "side effects" of the changes
that come through counseling, my clients also tend to be people who care about the impact of their lives on the welfare of
others. My people generally care at least as much about doing good as feeling good.
Most of my work is with individual
clients. At this point in my life, I limit my couples counseling to those dealing with the aftermath of infidelity. In addition,
I only work with couples who cohabited happily for at least a year before their differences became problematic.
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