Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy
Individual Work with Adults · Chicago · Online
It is a near-universal experience to become disoriented, adrift or turned around. To find oneself in a rough patch where emotions surge and courage falters, where one’s inner compass is spinning and the way forward feels obstructed or obscured.
Welcome. This is a place to pause and orient yourself, to slowly sort out where and perhaps who you are. To think and speak freely without constraints, and to be understood rather than simply heard or labeled.
You are invited to reach out for an initial consultation if you would like to explore working together.
People seek out psychoanalytic (“depth”) therapy for a variety of reasons. Chief among these is a hope, however faint, for more loving relationships with others and greater openness and creativity in oneself.
This kind of therapy views troubling symptoms and repetitive patterns as important messages about the state of one’s inner world – the life of the mind. It is an examination of the emotional undercurrents that inhibit us from living and loving more fully.
Our inner worlds can be a source of richness, vitality and meaning. But exploring our minds more deeply can feel somewhat daunting. To quote philosopher Robert Pirsig, “In the high country of the mind one has to become adjusted to the thinner air of uncertainty, and to the enormous magnitude of questions asked.”1
I provide a steady, attuned and thoughtful presence to help people sit with questions while gradually untangling the complicated knot of symptoms, patterns, protections and repetitions that have kept them lost or unmoored.
You are invited to reach out for an initial consultation if you would like to explore working together.
1 Robert Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
Training and Professional Background
I completed my doctoral training at the Chicago School of Professional Psychology in 2006. I am presently completing psychoanalytic training at the Chicago Center for Psychoanalysis.
Before my clinical work, I studied biology at the University of Minnesota. I loved the coursework, the glimpse into the complicated vitality beneath the surface. The molecules and microbes felt like a secret universe.
During this time, I worked at the Bell Museum of Natural History. At the museum, I encountered a very psychoanalytic idea: “The answer is the death of the question.” There were no labels on the animal exhibits. So if someone asked, “What is that?” we were trained to respond, “What do you think it is?” The children were enthusiastic participants, playing with the questions, guessing everything from unicorns to narwhals to dragons. They had not yet learned to temper their enthusiasm or feel shame about not knowing a “correct” response.
The museum work exposed me to another psychoanalytic concept: form follows function. Shape gives hints to purpose. A jawbone with some sharp and some flat teeth suggests an omnivorous animal. An angry outburst with some bite to it says many possible things, often along the lines of “you got too close to me and you scared or hurt or upset me and I would like you to leave now.”
Before graduate school, I briefly volunteered for the Chicago Bird Collision Monitors. Injured birds want to be left alone. And, of course, they cannot talk to people. More psychoanalytic ideas: A calm and steady bodily presence and a bit of patience are necessary to safely assist a creature trying to recover its equilibrium, especially when words fail or can't be found.
Working with biology and nature in this way taught me a lot about working with people. But a solely biological perspective on the brain felt limiting. So I shifted my focus to the life of the mind, the secret universe shaped by our earliest attachments and childhood experiences. But psychoanalysis, like biology, is not just a story of where we came from. It is about how we feel alive, right here in the present.
Individual Therapy
What is psychoanalytic therapy?
Psychoanalytic therapy is, in part, a treatment rooted in Freudian thought. To quote neuroscientist Robert Sapolsky, “I know it is obligatory to dump on Freud, and some of it is deserved, but there is much he still has to offer.”2
One of Freud’s most basic assumptions was that there is more to us than meets the eye. Certainly, we have conscious wishes and ideas and plans. But there are many experiences outside our immediate awareness, including thoughts, desires, relational patterns and ways of protecting our vulnerability.
The unconscious is still a radical concept, in part because it questions the belief that insight, intention and effort are sufficient to produce long-lasting change. This fuller version of being human means we are not reducible to symptom checklists or diagnostic labels. Nor are we algorithms to be optimized. We are people, multifaceted and idiosyncratic, with all sorts of hidden motivations and contradictory beliefs. That is the beauty but also the difficulty of being truly alive.
Psychoanalytic or depth therapy is a way to be in contact with those underlying forces and blind spots and to understand their impact on your emotions and relationships, here, in the present.
Is this for me?
People come here for a number of reasons. Sometimes life events can throw off our emotional equilibrium. There are the obvious culprits: death, divorce, illness, job loss. But even a positive life change can, at times, have unexpected emotional consequences. Birth, marriage, a promotion. All of these are a departure from the ordinary, with new feelings and new expectations, and they can evoke something unexpected inside us. In these situations, depth therapy can be useful to understand the internal repercussions of an external change.
And then there are longer-standing or more established difficulties. Anxiety that feels woven into the texture of life. Depression that may wax and wane but never quite abate. A general feeling of sensitivity or sensory overwhelm, as though the world itself is too loud or too sharp. An internal critic that refuses to be quiet. Repetitive relationship patterns that prove maddeningly hard to change. Psychoanalytic therapy helps shed light on old symptoms and entrenched ways of being, not through intellectual explanations but by listening more closely to what might be happening beneath the surface.
Insurance
I am in-network for all Blue Cross Blue Shield PPO plans. For all other insurance plans, I am out-of-network. Benefits can vary by specific plan, so I encourage you to find out more by calling the number on the back of your insurance card. If your plan is out-of-network, I can provide an itemized receipt so you may seek reimbursement from your insurance company. I am happy to answer specific questions about insurance or fees.
2 Robert Sapolsky, Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers
Reach out
You are invited to contact me if you have questions about my services or would like to schedule an appointment.
bjhnettleton@gmail.com
312.446.5602
30 N. Michigan Ave, Suite 1204 · Chicago, IL 60602
Currently accepting new clients
Call me at 312.446.5602 or click below to send an email. I will respond within 24 hours, Monday through Friday.
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Betsy Nettleton, PsyD
30 North Michigan, Chicago
Getting Here
Finding my office
My office is at 30 North Michigan Avenue, Suite 1204, on the corner of Michigan Avenue and Randolph Street, directly across from Millennium Park.
The office is easily accessible by public transit. The closest El stops are Randolph/Wabash and Washington/Wabash (Brown, Orange, Green, Purple and Pink lines), and the Lake stop on the Red Line and Washington/Dearborn stop on the Blue Line are both a short walk west along Randolph. Several CTA bus routes also stop along Michigan Avenue and Randolph Street.
If you are driving, the Grant Park North Garage on Michigan Avenue at Randolph is the most convenient option, with additional parking throughout the Loop.