Why Did I Become A Psychoanalyst?

I have always been interested in understanding and supporting people’s emotional lives, their relationships, creative pursuits, and the complexities of their past and present experiences. In my personal life, being with people in a grounded way—talking openly about what's going on in our lives and our inner worlds—has always been important.

These interests influenced my decision to become a psychoanalyst. I wanted to explore deeply with people their experience—the ways in which their emotional complexities shape them, their joys and disappointments, yearnings, the rhythms and patterns of their personal and professional lives, their relationships with others. I meant to walk with people through their pain and frustration, their satisfaction and joy, to explore together the impacts of past experiences and cultural environments.

As a clinician, I feel deeply at home in this career. Working with patients is a continually rich and ever-expanding experience, which resounds with me on emotional, intellectual, creative, and profoundly human levels.

What Type Of Patients Do I Serve?

I work with a broad spectrum of people who come to therapy representing an equally broad range of interests, concerns, and needs. However, I specialize in supporting patients in better understanding their feelings and nurturing their emotional lives. This approach tends to have positive impacts across a person’s total life experience, including developing a more expansive, vital, and grounded sense of self as well as deepened romantic relationships, friendships, and professional and creative pursuits.

I love working with patients who want to become more emotionally integrated, more emotionally intelligent—those who want to understand themselves better, and be able to experience and express feelings without getting overwhelmed. Also because spirituality can be such an integral part of who we are, I also enjoy working with patients who want to talk about their spiritual lives and experiences.

Some people come into therapy with a clear sense of what they would like to work on, such as reducing anxiety or depression, moving forward in their professional or creative lives, finding support for the grieving process, or improving their relationships. Others come in without a clear sense of what they’d like to achieve—only the feeling that they want to explore themselves and expand their personal, professional, or spiritual lives. So there are many routes to having a meaningful experience in therapy.

As a Bay Area psychoanalyst, I’ve worked with technologists, academics, company executives, authors, journalists, graduate students, psychotherapists, and professionals and creatives of all stripes—people from all sorts of professional and intellectual backgrounds. I love working collaboratively to deepen patients’ personal and professional capacities while helping them find balance in their relationships, home lives, and creative pursuits.

I also work with patients to support their feeling emotionally grounded, balanced, alive, and at peace throughout all realms of life experience—that includes both work and non-work activities. Ultimately, I want people to get the most out of life by helping them experience profound, long-term healing and growth while also collaborating on ways for them to overcome immediate challenges.

My Counseling Philosophy

Each person is unique, so I meet people where they are, pursuing the thread of exploration to wherever it leads us. Rather than hand out pre-manufactured solutions, I am interested in being with patients in their experience, processing, and moving through it together.

I believe that meaningful, comprehensive healing requires looking at the totality of a person and dwelling with them on a deep level that goes beyond merely addressing symptoms. Of course, we work on alleviating symptoms, too. In fact, looking at the whole person helps us do that in a comprehensive and lasting way. Toward that end, I draw on several therapeutic approaches that allow me to tailor a healing strategy for each patient.

Working in a safe, caring environment, I offer individuals the chance to understand more fully and deeply who they are—including their suffering, the sources of their joy, what they yearn for, and what they would like to achieve in therapy. I also help people discover the steps they need to take in order to further develop into the person they want to be, and we can set out on that journey together.

Overall, I focus on meaningful support, relief, and personal growth. As patients develop greater self-awareness and new ideas for what is possible within themselves, their relationships, and their lives, the processes and goals for therapy often evolve as well.

My Background And What Makes My Practice Unique

I’ve always been interested in people's inner lives. So on my journey to becoming a therapist, I found myself in careers and fields of study that were intrinsically linked, which supported me in becoming the clinician I am today.

I am a research psychoanalyst with a Psy.D. in contemporary psychoanalysis. I also hold a Ph.D. in Religious Studies and continue to do research/publishing in both this area and in the clinical field. In addition, I enjoy providing clinical supervision for psychiatry residents at the University of California, San Francisco, medical school.

As a Ph.D. in Religious Studies and a scholar of religion, I research contemporary spiritual life, particularly among the “spiritual but not religious.” I enjoy conducting ethnographic research, doing in-depth interviews and fieldwork that explores people’s inner spiritual worlds and connections to their emotional lives and communities.

As a principal investigator and research director, I designed and led a large, ambitious research initiative that examined the impact that cutting-edge technologies exert on human relationships. I also worked as a staff writer with the Los Angeles Times, writing about the emotional and social dimensions of technology, art, and culture. All of this enriches and informs my practice as a clinician.

My lifelong interest in understanding and supporting people’s deep inner experiences combined with my clinical approach, specialties, and professional expertise make my practice unique. That said, I think that having a safe, caring environment in which to be yourself and feel your feelings—even if they are distressing at times—is among the most important elements of the healing process.

And that’s the bedrock of what I aim to offer every one of my patients—a trusted ally who will engage with them deeply and support them in the expansion of their ability to feel, understand, and grow.

Dr. Steven Barrie-Anthony is a Research Psychoanalyst serving patients in Berkeley, Oakland, Albany, the East Bay, and the greater San Francisco Bay Area. He also offers support across California via telehealth. Steven holds a Psy.D. in Contemporary Psychoanalysis and a Ph.D. in Religious Studies. In addition to his clinical practice, Steven conducts research and publishes at the juncture of psychoanalysis and the study of spiritual life. He recently directed a multiyear research initiative examining the ways in which new technologies impact human relationships, and he is a UC Berkeley Research Associate.