Samantha Stein, PsyD (PSY19074)

I have been practicing psychotherapy for over 30 years. During this time, I’ve developed expertise in couples/relationships, sexuality, addiction, neurodiversity, grief and loss, life transition, creativity, spirituality and religion, paraphilias, and codependency.

I’ve also had a career as a forensic psychologist, evaluating and working with people who have difficulty stopping, controlling or changing their behaviors, such as sexual offenses and compulsive stealing behaviors. I’ve provided treatment, completed over a hundred psychological evaluations, provided court testimony, and worked with attorneys, probation and parole, and other institutions within our legal system. My CV can be accessed here.

Finally, I’ve had extensive experience providing consultation, supervision, training, and workshops to other professionals in the field or interested organizations.

I am also a writer and artist. That work can be found at my other webiste here. My book about my work as a forensic psychologist here. My column at Psychology Today can be accessed here.

Spencer Carlson, PsyD (94028345)

Psychological Associate

My very first client, back when I was in graduate school, was a woman trapped in an abusive relationship. She loved her partner and feared for her safety. Two things that felt irreconcilable. In our second session, after she named her experience and I applied one of the foundational techniques of this approach, she went quiet. Not because she was done, but because for the first time, what had been an unresolved trauma had been laid out precisely and seen clearly. She felt understood not only in her desire to stay and be the loving partner she wanted to be. In that recognition, something unlocked.

That moment, early in my training, confirmed what eight years have since made undeniable: precise understanding doesn’t just help people feel better, it catalyzes them.

For eight years I have worked under Dr. Matthew Braunstein, founder and director of the Institute for Emergence, and creator of The Driven Method – a systematic, unified framework for understanding the innate drives that push us and reveal how human psychology actually develops. I am formally certified in this methodology and train clinicians through the Institute.

My nearly decade-long focus on this knowledge has produced in me a refined quality of attention, one that guides clients to understand their experience completely. What once felt shameful or frightening becomes a deep source of wisdom.

What clients leave with is not just relief. It is knowledge of themselves. Precise, specific, and uniquely their own.