Lynn Preston, MA, MS
Director
Tel.: (212) 995-8116
Email: lynpres@aol.com
Lynn Preston, a focusing oriented psychoanalyst for over 30 years, is the Director of the New York Focusing Oriented Relational Psychotherapy (FORP) program and Co-Director of the Cape Town (South Africa) Focusing Oriented Therapy (FOT) training program. In addition, she is Co-Director of the New York Training and Research Institute for Self Psychology (TRISP) evening program. She has written several articles about focusing and relationality in psychotherapy and has a special interest in experiential teaching and supervision. She is deeply involved with the process of articulating the micro-movements of focusing and relational psychotherapy and exploring the relationship between philosophy, theory, and practice.
“‘What do you think is important in life?’ This is the question I asked all my neighbors at the age of 11. Now, as a psychotherapist and teacher, I continue to seek what is meaningful. Each session with a client and every class gives me the opportunity to participate in the discovery of the vitality and richness of the interactional moment and its unfolding over time.”
Janet Pfunder
Assistant Director
Faculty Member and Supervisor
Tel.: (718) 499-2232 Office
Email: janetpfunder@yahoo.com
Office: Park Slope, Brooklyn
Janet Pfunder has been a therapist and supervisor, in private practice, for 30 years. She was certified by the Focusing Institute in 2000 and now teaches Focusing. She is also a teacher and supervisor for the FORP (Focusing Oriented Relational Psychotherapy) programs, created by Lynn Preston, in both New York and Cape Town, South Africa. She also leads Focusing Oriented Dream Groups. She will present “Dream Appreciation: A Crossing of Eugene Gendlin and Montague Ullman”at the FOT Conference in November 2009. She studied dream group process with Montague Ullman, Jungian alchemy with Nathan Schwartz-Salant and gender theory with Jessica Benjamin. She continues to study psychoanalysis with Michael Eigen. Following several decades of immersion in Sufi practice and teaching, her paper “Sufi Meditations on Psychotherapy” was published in 2005 in Psychotherapy and Religion: Many Paths, One Journey. Her most recent paper, “Colors of the Invisible: Sufi Healing,” was published in 2008 in WomanSoul: The Inner Life of Women’s Spirituality. She is also a painter; her most recent one-woman show was at Harvard in 2000, as an alumna. Some of her work may be seen at www.janetpfunderpaintings.com.
Judith Cobb, PhD
Faculty Member and Supervisor
Tel.: (212) 724-7760
Email: judecobb@aol.com
Judith Cobb is a licensed clinical psychologist, psychoanalyst, and family therapist in private practice in New York City. For the past ten years she has integrated focusing into her psychotherapy practice with individuals and couples, and into her supervision of therapists and trainees. Previously, she spent 25 years as director of the psychology department and psychology training program at a major New York City hospital center.
“My introduction to focusing over 12 years ago has transformed my way of working with my clients, as well as my way of being in the world — and it keeps on giving. Following my certification training with Mary Gendlin, I studied and became a coach in Robert Lee’s Domain Focusing program. For the past four years, I have been a student, teacher, and supervisor in Lynn Preston’s Focusing Oriented Relational Psychotherapy (FORP) program. A special highlight of 2008 was a trip to South Africa, where Charlotte Howorth and I presented a three-day workshop to a group of focusing oriented psychotherapists. My current interests center on the integration of focusing and the many aspects of self, including work with the critic self and dissociative states, as well as with shame. Anne Shollar, CSW and I have developed a two-part workshop series on this topic.”
Charlotte Howorth, LCSW
Faculty Member and Supervisor
Tel.: (347) 489-9587
Email: ch@howortherapy.com
Website: www.howortherapy.com
Charlotte Howorth has been a practicing psychotherapist for 16 years. She grew up in England where she produced and directed TV documentaries about psychotherapy and became drawn to becoming a therapist through that work. While still in England, she completed a four-year training program in Transpersonal Psychotherapy from the spiritual Sufi perspective and then became involved in learning and practicing in Process Work and Focusing. With a partner, she later started a psychotherapy center called The Grove, where she practiced and ran regular supervision groups for the center’s practitioners.
Charlotte moved to New York City in 2000 and received her master’s in Social Work and completed post-graduate training in couples and family therapy, EMDR, CDOI, and a two-year training program with Mary Hendricks to become a Focusing-Oriented Psychotherapist and Trainer. She also took part in several advanced trainings in Focusing with Lynn Preston and Robert Lee while assisting them over several years in teaching Focusing programs. In addition, she completed a psychoanalytic training program in Relational Self Psychology and a psychoanalytic group therapy program at the Postgraduate Center for Mental Health.
Charlotte is currently Clinical Consultant at the Center for Human Development and Family Services, an agency that specializes in family and couples therapy, where she teaches and supervises clinicians. She is also a part-time lecturer in social work at Columbia University. As a Focusing trainer, she teaches the Focusing Institute’s two-year training program in Focusing Oriented Psychotherapy, as well as their introductory courses in Focusing. She has a private practice in Manhattan and Brooklyn, where she sees individuals, couples, families, and groups using a Focusing oriented relational, self psychological approach.
“I so clearly remember being present at a meeting with a spiritual teacher, a man very dear, deeply honest, and compassionate. Someone in the audience was sitting with him and thanking him from the bottom of his heart for all his help. The teacher said simply, ‘I am not helping you, I am knowing you.’ The truth of this sharing touched me deeply and it has always stayed with me. In psychotherapy, it’s important that knowing is much more than an intellectual understanding, but instead a deep joining and understanding of self and other through the felt sense of Focusing.”
Robin Kappy
Faculty Member and Supervisor
Tel.: (212) 929-1662
Email: robinkappylcsw@verizon.net
Robin Kappy has been a psychotherapist and supervisor in practice since 1989. She is a certified Focusing Oriented Psychotherapist and Focusing is central in her work. Robin also offers EMDR (see www.emdr.org) and has received advanced training in CATCH Permissive Hypnosis. Robin has been a participant in Lynn Preston’s theoretical study groups (self psychological, intersubjective, relational and Focusing oriented) for over 10 years. Her professional background includes experience in the areas of addiction, HIV/AIDS, and cancer.
In collaboration with Susan Rudnick, LCSW, Robin has developed a process called Rest Well Tonight (see www.restwelltonight.com), an individualized process to help people rest and sleep more easily. In collaboration with therapist Janet Pfunder, Robin also leads “Visual Experiencing” workshops, offering opportunities for participants to appreciate and explore how the world we see around us interacts with our experience directly and metaphorically. Robin is also a visual artist, whose work has appeared in various venues. She specializes in working with artists and with issues around creativity, depression, anxiety, and relationships. She is in-network with Empire BC/BS and Oxford.
“We each have a ‘sensing lens,’ guiding us to notice what we experience within and around us. With Focusing, the complexity of a moment or situation may unfold with a heightened awareness of intricacies, nuances, feelings, and meanings. When expressing one’s experience from this sensing, ‘bodily-felt’ perspective, words may implicitly represent much more than thoughts alone. What is ‘felt’ within the therapeutic relationship may then find support for an organic process of change.”
Eileen Kaufman
Faculty Member and Supervisor
Tel.: (212) 873-6442
Email: ekaufman7@nyc.rr.com
Eileen Kaufman is a practicing and licensed psychoanalyst, psychotherapist, and Focuser in New York City. After receiving a certificate in psychoanalysis at the Alfred Adler Institute, she became a lecturer, supervisor, and training analyst there, where she has continued that affiliation. She is also a professor of psychology and chairperson of the Psychology Department at Union County College in New Jersey.
After several years of practicing and teaching, Eileen wanted to expand her knowledge and scope and, after hearing about Focusing, became excited about it. She completed training in Focusing Oriented Psychotherapy from the Focusing Institute. Since then, to continue to grow, Eileen has been a member of study groups in relational psychoanalysis and self psychology. She has recently enrolled in a training program in hypnotherapy.
“In my work, I try to integrate the different approaches and to be creative as the need arises.”
Joan Lavender, PsyD
Faculty Member and Supervisor
250 West 90th Street
Apt. 6I
New York, NY 10024
Tel.: (212) 866-0461
Fax: (917) 493-0132
Email: joan@joanlavender.com
www.joanlavender.com
www.healyourenvy.com
Joan Lavender is a clinical psychologist with thirty years experience as a psychotherapist and supervisor. Her earliest training in Experiential Focusing and movement serve as a perspective unifying all of her clinical work. Joan is a graduate of the Graduate Program in Clinical Psychology at Widener University and The Institute for Contemporary Psychotherapy. She is a past Fellow of the Postdoctoral Program for Psychotherapy Research at SUNY, where she had the rare opportunity to study the relationship between movement behavior and the symbolizing process. She is a supervisor in the Center for the Study of Anorexia and Bulimia and the Focusing Oriented Relational Psychotherapy (FORP) program. Her latest article, “The Phenomenology of the Relational Void: Probabilities and Possibilities,” will be included in a psychoanalytic collection on loneliness.
“I learned focusing 30 years ago and was immediately taken with its gentle power and the beauty of the philosophy. I see the creation of an experiential environment as an essential component of psychotherapy. This moves us together into dimensions of meaning that are as beautiful as they are unique. I am a lively therapist with a droll sense of humor and an ability to help people with complex issues. I write about envy, loneliness, eating disorders, body image, and the experience of life as a therapist.”
Ruth Rosenblum, LCSW
Faculty Member and Supervisor
71 Cassilis Ave.
Bronxville, NY 10708
Tel.: (914) 450-5776
Email: rsrosenblum@optonline.net
Ruth Rosenblum has been a psychotherapist for more than 25 years and specializes, as a certified Focusing trainer, in Focusing Oriented Relational Psychotherapy. As founding director of the Westchester Focusing Center, she conducts workshops and trainings in Westchester County. She has also presented on Focusing and Spirituality at national and international conferences.
As a psychotherapist, social work supervisor, and program developer, Ruth has worked with diverse populations in a variety of treatment settings, including hospitals, special education schools, and community mental health centers. She has extensive experience with individuals facing life-threatening illnesses and was a founding member of Turning Point, a treatment center for children and families dealing with such illnesses. Ruth is a long-time student of holistic and integrative approaches to health and life, and has practiced Insight Meditation and yoga since 1980. She also teaches classes in Jewish meditation and contemplative practices.
“At my first Focusing workshop, I knew I had found a personal and professional home. Focusing and Focusing Oriented Relational Psychotherapy are now the foundations of my practice. Both have touched my own inner knowings about how life truly lives and moves through us towards healing and wholeness.”
Jenny Ross, LCSW
Faculty Member and Supervisor
611 Broadway (at Houston)
Suite 629B
Tel.: (212) 475-2002
New York, NY 10012
Email: jennysross@aol.com
Jenny Ross has been involved with Focusing for the past 15 years and has studied with Gene Gendlin, Robert Lee, and Lynn Preston. During the past two years, she has been on the faculty of the Focusing Oriented Relational Psychotherapy (FORP) program in New York City and South Africa.
Jenny is a graduate of a four-year psychoanalytic training program at the National Institute for the Psychotherapies, which has an emphasis on self psychology. She has been in private practice for 20 years and previously was Director of Crisis Services for a downtown NYC hospital. In that capacity, she worked extensively with the homeless and mentally ill, as well as with traumatized families in the aftermath of Sept. 11th, setting up a trauma training program at the hospital to deal with those individuals; the program incorporated a number of modalities including Focusing, Somatic Experiencing, and Neuro Linguistic Programming. Jenny is also certified in Ericksonian Hypnosis. Her undergraduate background is in journalism and creative writing.
“I am very much interested in the process of focusing and its application to creativity, dream work, and the forward edge where something ‘new’ emerges. I have loved the radical wisdom of the Focusing process from the very first moment I tried it. It allows me to speak from a deeper part of myself – from a body level. It has helped me to accept what is there and be curious about it, with myself and with patients.”
Susan Rudnick, LCSW
Faculty Member and Supervisor
Tel.: (917) 655-4752
Email: haikususan@aol.com
Website: restwelltonight.com
Susan Rudnick has been in the private practice of psychoanalysis and psychotherapy for over 30 years, working with individuals and couples.
Her journey began with analytic training at the Karen Horney Institute, where she subsequently taught and became a Training and Supervising Analyst. Karen Horney’s paradigm can be viewed as an early Self Psychology model. From this base, Susan expanded her horizons when she discovered Focusing and Focusing Oriented psychotherapy and began to integrate this into her work. For the past nine years, she has studied Self and Relational Psychology and their interface with Focusing with Lynn Preston. In the last two years, Susan has been actively involved in helping to shape Lynn Preston’s Focusing Oriented Relational Psychotherapy (FORP) program. She supervises and teaches FORP students.
“My practice of Zen meditation has nourished and expanded my work as a Focusing Oriented therapist. The perspective of being present to what is, “being with,” dovetails so well with the work of Focusing. To this end, I have written a chapter called “Coming Home to Wholeness,” which appears in Into the Mountain Stream: Psychotherapy and Buddhist Experience.
“Most recently, I have been collaborating with my focusing partner, Robin Kappy, to develop ways of working with sleep issues using focusing as a base. This work has at its heart the idea of helping people to nurture and “be with” themselves in the darkness of a sleepless night. Our website, Restwelltonight.com, introduces our multifaceted approach to creating natural pathways to sleep. I also love to write haikus.”
Anne Shollar, LCSW-R
Faculty Member and Supervisor
Tel.: (212) 744-6990
Email: Anne.Shollar@nbhn.net
Anne Shollar is a relational psychotherapist who has practiced in New York City for 33 years. She graduated from the Focusing Institute and serves on the faculty of the Focusing Oriented Relational Psychotherapy (FORP) group. Trained in systems work at the Ackerman Institute for the Family, she is a regular lecturer on interviewing technique and theories of engagement to medical residents at Albert Einstein College of Medicine.
Ms. Shollar has developed and co-led a workshop in Focusing in Everyday Life, which was presented in New York City and at the Focusing International Conference in Montreal. She recently presented, with co-leader Judith Cobb, a second workshop, entitled “Guess Who’s Coming to Therapy? Making Space for the Uninvited, Reluctant and Critical Aspects of the Self,” in New York City; they are currently working on a continuation of this workshop. She is also planning to present at the first FORP conference in November of 2009.
“When I begin to work with a patient I realize that together we face the challenge of exploring all the complexities, confusion, and hurt that are embedded in the problem for which they seek therapy. With a deep commitment to holding a space for all that is there and listening for the unspoken feelings that lie beneath, I bear witness to the experiential unfolding of what has not before been expressed. Once this happens, patients come into contact with their authentic self, the confusion begins to clear, the hurt sets about healing, and there is trust in this emergent self.”