our staff

Dan Gottsegen
Clinical Director

Daniel Gottsegen, Ph.D. is a graduate of the California Institute of Integral Studies Masters and Doctoral programs in Psychology. His work as the Clinical Director of the Pierce Street ICC is an expression of his desire to support and serve those who are dedicating their lives to the service of others. He is also a psychologist in private practice in San Francisco.

Susan Weiss
Administrative Director

Susan Weiss has a Masters from the California Institite of Integral Studies and is a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist.

Alison Howard

Carl Jung once said, “even a happy life cannot be without a measure of darkness, and the word 'happy' would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness.” While suffering is an inevitable part of the human experience, in the therapeutic process, suffering is a beginning, not an ending.

As a psychotherapist, I work with clients struggling with sadness, depression, anxiety, loss, anger, and grief. Some are unable to experience pleasure of any kind. Others feel disconnected and unfulfilled. I listen and strive to have the deepest possible understanding of each client. I recognize that while suffering may be universal, every person has a unique story and therapy is an opportunity to tell that story and have it be heard. It is a safe space to laugh and to cry, and explore hopes, fears, fantasies, and dreams without a fear of being judged. Therapy is a sacred and creative journey, a pathway towards self-discovery and self-growth, a place for internal reflection, and a place to heal wounds and feel whole.

I practice therapy from my heart and work from a place of deep authenticity, compassion, love, joy, and empathy. I believe at its essence, therapy is about making meaningful contact with another individual. That bond which develops over time between client and therapist has a unique healing power. I also believe that the therapeutic process, although often difficult, must have a place for laughter, warmth, and joyful feelings.

I also have extensive training as a sex educator. I believe sexuality is an important component of self-expression. Therefore, I invite clients to explore their sexuality and gender expression in the therapy room.

Ashley Miller

I believe that each of us is guided by a deeper wisdom and intuition. Often this authentic nature is overshadowed by feelings of self doubt, anxiety, fear, behaviors, and beliefs that are counter-intuitive to our growth and true happiness. Therapy is a way to connect with this inner guidance, clear away obstacles, and live the life you have always imagined.

My intention as a therapist is to provide a heart-centered, safe place to heal, transform, and step towards a more fulfilling life. I create a warm and supportive environment where I meet my clients with experience, compassion, and empathy. I encourage people to explore, confront, and to become curious about what keeps them feeling stuck.

I have a holistic approach to therapy that includes mind, body, and spirit. I work in a variety of ways including somatically (body oriented), mindfully, and relationally. I focus on my clients’ inner relationship with themselves and the therapeutic relationship that comes forward in our work together. My overall goal is that you feel seen, heard, and supported on your path to well-being. I look forward to joining you on this journey.

I have a wide range of experience including therapy surrounding relationship issues and intimacy, career decisions and satisfaction, low self-esteem, anxiety, depression, and addiction/recovery (substance and food, co-dependency, adult children of alcoholics).

Bart Hatler

My personal life experiences drew me into the field of psychology and psychotherapy both from a standpoint of fascination with humanity and life, and as a process of uncovering old beliefs, earlier experiences, and less-than-ideal strategies for approaching life and human experience. Through my personal journey of self-re-discovery and self-understanding I have healed, integrated and come to better know and appreciate various parts of myself. The growth and healing I’ve experienced on this path has transformed many aspects of who I see myself as, and how I relate to myself and others.

My intention in therapy is to provide a sense of safety, warmth, respect, and understanding and to relate meaningfully with the person I’m sitting with. I draw on my own personal work along with the skills, training and experiences I’ve gained as a therapist and a trust in each individual’s innate capacity to heal, grow and organically unfold.

I draw on a lineage of thinkers and practitioners that see human relationship as both the place where we tend to get most wounded and the place where we can most meaningfully heal. While our past may have shaped us, it is the present moment that holds the power for our transformation and integration, and our aliveness. I also respect and value the wisdom of the body and each person’s most natural, organic and real Self.

Along with its beauty, life can bring hurts and aches, and part of the journey to healing and a greater sense of wholeness and ease often means moving through these experiences. Part of what I provide for individuals is that someone who will help them hold feelings of pain, shame and other uncomfortable experiences that have been difficult to be with. Having a supportive, caring person there to walk through those experiences with us can be invaluable. Having this kind of support can also inspire us to see the good and the strength in us, and the possibility of living a meaningful, vibrant life in connection with those parts of us as well .

Bryan Newman

The path to inner wholeness is, in many ways, one of the most important journeys a person can make in a lifetime. Though this is an inward journey, one most often hidden from the view of others, it is no exaggeration to say that its impact is felt in every aspect of our lives “in the world.” Thus as our inner experience becomes more cohesive and aligned with a deeper purpose, we find that we are able to live our lives with more authenticity, joy and love. I believe that psychotherapy is one of our culture’s most powerful tools for navigating this inner path, a rare space in our increasingly fast-paced society where we are able to reflect, share, cry, laugh, explore, develop and heal without fear of judgment or not being heard.

My work as a psychotherapist developed out of a previous career as a wilderness guide as well as a decade’s worth of immersion in meditation practice. These experiences eventually led me to the Integral Counseling Center, where I work with clients struggling with issues ranging from grief, anxiety and depression to romantic, sexual and career questions and difficulties. I also have extensive experience working therapeutically with adolescents. In my practice, I emphasize both the “depth” and relational aspects of psychotherapy; it is my hope that in this way, each Client’s internal wisdom may arise in the context of a warm and supportive therapeutic relationship. In a session together, we might focus both on the immediate sources of distress, stuckness or pain in your life experience, as well as the deeper layers of personal history, meaning, metaphor and mystery that are at their root.

Danielle Ghilotti

"It is by going down into the abyss that we recover the treasures of life. Where you stumble, there lies your treasure."
~ Joseph Campbell

Suffering may be an inevitable part of the human experience, but I also believe that there is place of peace, expansion and vitality that exists within each of us. It is by making the decision to look at that which causes our suffering that we are able to find our unique paths to freedom. As your therapist, I will support you with as much delicacy and respect as I am able, working with you to explore and uncover hidden or lost parts of yourself, working with you in your reclamation of these parts and the reclamation of life.

Emily Gordon

"To be human is to become visible"
~ David Whyte

I believe the greatest gift we can give to ourselves is a deep appreciation of the depth and complexity of our emotional lives. Coming to therapy is a way to engage more fully with yourself and the world around you. By bringing to light that which is unknown, therapy is an opportunity to examine ways of being that may no longer serve you.

A far cry from navel gazing, therapy is a process that will engage and challenge you. Together we will explore your full range of emotions, including contradictory or troubling feelings that initially may be difficult to express. We will identify recurring patterns that may be painful or self-defeating. As you begin to see how your past affects your present, you will be able to live more fully in the here and now.

As a therapist, I view my work with clients as collaboration. I trust that within all of us is the desire for health – mental, emotional and physical. I value and welcome diversity, cultural or sexual, and honor the courage it takes to live an examined life.

Emily Swanson

Bio forthcoming.

Emily Mills

Bio forthcoming.

Jasmine Ruoff

How
Did the rose
Ever open it’s heart
And give this world
All its
Beauty?
It felt the encouragement of light
Against its
Being,
Otherwise,
We all remain
Too
Frightened.
~ Hafiz

From as humble and integrated a place that is possible within me, I strive to support you in resting into the depth of your being where true health and wisdom reside. From this place, we will explore your strengths and challenges, what your body has to communicate, what your heart feels and what your mind is believing. My hope is that you will feel truly seen, appropriately challenged and deeply supported by me in an environment of openness, curiosity and acceptance.

Jeanne Foss

Maybe you are looking for your lost voice and wondering who you really are under the confusing layers of shoulds and conditioning that color your heart and mind. Or maybe you are simply looking for ways to express yourself exactly as you are in a safe, honest, non-judgmental environment.

Whether you are struggling in your relationship with yourself, grieving the loss of a loved one, stuck in painful patterns in your relationships, questioning your life path, or feeling confused and isolated with thoughts and feelings that no one seems to understand, I can accompany you.

My own healing work through visual arts, songwriting, and mindfulness meditation has led me to this path of deep listening. I see getting to know oneself and finding one’s true voice as the ultimate fine art, regardless of the medium (simply speaking, deeply feeling, drawing, writing… you choose). As a therapist, I strive to attune to your moment-to-moment needs with acceptance and compassion, offering a warm, real, and collaborative space for emotional, spiritual and creative unfolding.

I see Individuals and Couples.

Jonathan Moss

You may be seeking therapy with the hope of fixing or getting rid of symptoms, relationships, or patterns of thinking and acting that feel stuck or painful. While it is natural to want to move away from what is hurting you, this approach to your experiences can be very limiting and often doesn't work. The reason for this is that symptoms can be expressions of unknown and unrecognized aspects of yourself. Often symptoms can prove to have been valuable and intelligent responses to difficult experiences early in life that have simply outgrown their usefulness.

In therapy we have the opportunity to understand and integrate those aspects of yourself that have previously remained fixed and mysterious. True understanding, one that is both deeply felt as well as thought through, leads to a lessening or disappearance of symptoms, and perhaps more importantly, profound changes in how you experience yourself, your relationships, and your life.

Joshua Stern

Like the acorn that has everything inside of it to become the mighty oak, I believe all individuals hold their own roadmaps to life deep inside. You have everything you need right inside of you at this very moment to make change, to be the person you want to be, and ultimately to live life more fully. Tragically, we get cut off from this truth. We all experience struggles, pains, and meet life in ways that close us off from our internal guides and wisdom; ultimately moving us away from our true selves. Therapy can help. It can play the role of fertile soil, sunshine, and rain to help that mighty oak from within materialize. Therapy is a place where you can reclaim yourself.

This is my approach. I will work with you through your discovery and by co-creating meaning. I will listen intently, hoping to help support your true inner voice being heard. I will approach our time together with non-judgment and with non-defensiveness in the hopes of helping that aliveness we both feel inside come out and play. Being with ourselves, accepting ourselves, and truly meeting ourselves (sometimes for the very first time) can be challenging so I will bring forth my genuineness, my positive regard, and my empathy to help you feel safe in this difficult space. I believe we are all set free when we are able to really be with all of our experiences completely. I will invite you to be with your totality and I will be there with you. I will sit in relationship with you.

Kate Ramsey

Bio forthcoming.

Maneesh Saini

Bio forthcoming.

Mary Jane Covell

I view psychotherapy as an art of knowing how to deeply Be with another--how to be with another in service of self exploration, healing, and the journey into aliveness.

Although I have developed skills and tools, I see my real practice as learning to be as present, receptive, and centered in my heart as possible so that my inner guidance can connect with my client's inner guidance. This relationship is very collaborative--it is a graceful dance of following and leading, leading and following, and together we find our way.

I work to build a safe container and loving presence that aims to strengthen the capacity to be with the Self more fully. I invite people to be with the totality of their experience as much as possible--encouraging all the many radiant faces of light and shadow to come out and play--the anger, joy, sadness, laughter, defeat, and triumph.

Everything is welcome and everything is held as fruitful. The Alchemical nature of this journey is quite remarkable. We find that as we turn toward our fear and suffering they actually become the doorway to the riches of our Being, and our Pain is transmuted into possibility.

My assumption is that there is a place within that knows who you truly are.

There's an intelligence inside that knows how to untangle any struggle. By learning to trust our own intelligent, instinctual, intuitive bodies we are guided toward what is missing, what is being blocked, and what is wanting to unfold in our lives.

I bring my compassion, enthusiasm, and desire to understand within an Experiential, Relational, and Somatic-based framework. I employ methods of hakomi, mindfulness, hypnosis, gestalt, and psychosynthesis.

Michele Waldman

Making the decision to go to therapy can often be difficult, but it can also provide you with tremendous relief and support. As a therapist, I am here to listen and understand your life, history, problems, and relationships -- and to offer support and counsel where you need it. My hope is that you are going to understand yourself and your life better, as well as find relief.

My experience includes working with both couples and individuals with issues related to abandonment; anxiety; parenting; depression; trauma; relationships; recovery from substances including food, chemicals and alcohol; and career choices.

Natalie Spautz

Isn't it time that these most ancient
sorrows of ours
grew fruitful?
~ Rainer Maria Rilke

"In a world filled with uncertainties, how do I return to myself and my own path, to find balance, happiness and love?" If you find yourself asking this question, or something like it, you might benefit from looking deeper into your own nature within the context of psychotherapy. As you advance in the process of self-growth and finding a deeper sense of self-knowing, I will help to facilitate the discovery of your own unique treasures of potential and inherent resiliency to transform wounds, both ancient and new.

I warmly invite you to sit and talk, to speak truths about your life that perhaps even you were hardly aware of. One way we may work, is to feel the experience of being in your own body, to get comfortable within it, to get to know its wisdom and emotions like an old familiar friend. We may also examine what way of being in your life feels most right and resonant with your deepest desires and how to best move from that place of purpose. Looking forward to meeting with you on a courageous journey of moving into health, healing and a fuller more enjoyable human experience.

I work relationally and psychodynamically with emphasis in somatic awareness. I bring interest in social psychology and social justice work, in addition to mindfulness practice from many years of vipassana meditation and spiritual inquiry. Some of the many issues I work with include: anxiety and depression, relationship issues, addiction, substance abuse and recovery, sexual abuse, trauma, PTSD, life goals and transition, grief/loss, couples work, women’s issues, and spiritual inquiry/emergence.

Rachel Packer

Expanding ones capacity for self awareness is a learning experience that we can all benefit from and can eventually lead to living a richer, more complete existence. In getting in touch with our inner self and developing a loving understanding of that self, we can better understand our behaviors, our relationships, and perhaps how we may want to make changes that lead to greater happiness.

My style of therapy is interactive. I believe that there is not just one type of therapy that is most effective but that a good therapist can meet the individual needs of the client. Some people prefer a more psychodynamic approach, focusing on an exploration of their past and how experiences consciously or unconsciously manifest in our lives today. Others prefer more direction; they like to leave therapy with tools or “homework” to help change unhealthy patterns or behaviors. Whatever style a client is looking for, all clients need someone to listen empathically and with an open heart. In working with you, my desire is to listen without judgment, and create a safe space where vulnerable issues can be explored and understood.

Rosemary McCracken

I honor the courage that it takes to lead an examined life. I work from a strength-based approach, believing that each person has innate wisdom and knowledge of what is needed to bring oneself back into balance. I believe that my role as a therapist is to act as a facilitator, to work through what has gotten in the way of one’s natural state of homeostasis, allowing access to the totality of oneself.

Ryan Bethem

Psychotherapy is about building a relationship that is conducive to helping individuals alleviate psychological pain, while fostering wholeness and vitality across all areas of life experience. A central part of the healing process is establishing a safe and trusting therapeutic relationship. My approach focuses on creating an interactive and collaborative setting that invites the range of human experience. Within the unique dynamics of a therapeutic relationship, there is an opportunity for deeper understanding of experience and self-discovery. The goals and trajectory of therapy are catered to the needs of each individual as the therapeutic process unfolds.

My philosophy is based upon an understanding that human beings are inherently whole. As we come into contact with various aspects of our environment, we develop psychological coping strategies that can be painful. Within the dynamics of an accepting therapeutic relationship, painful thoughts, feelings, memories, and other aspects of experience can be faced in order to catalyze a unique healing process that promotes a richer experience of the inherent wholeness residing within.

My experience includes therapeutically working with the following: trauma, general/social anxiety, relationship problems, emotional regulation, life-transitions, addictive behaviors, alcohol and chemical dependence, depression, and psychosis.

Scott Silverstein

Through working with compassion, understanding, and awareness my hope is to create a therapeutic space where clients can feel safe expressing what feels most alive for them in the moment. Asking for help and support can be difficult, especially when we become so accustomed to facing our challenges by ourselves. Though there's often difficulty in asking for what we need, taking that step can lead to real opportunities for self understanding and acceptance.

I have experience working with clients from a broad range of backgrounds, and see it as crucial that clients feel space in the therapy for ways in which they identify as a person.

It is important to me that the therapy room be a place where not only difficult emotions are welcome but also joyfulness and humor. I strongly believe that the client's therapy should be theirs to create, and that my job is to facilitate and support that happening.

Through the therapeutic relationship, we can come to the realization that the weight we hold doesn't have to be ours to carry alone.

Sergio Scales

How could something as simple as being truly heard and seen by another be so profoundly healing? This is what I strive to offer in every session of therapy. Through this interaction of shared attention, layers of self may gradually come to be seen, accepted and loved. In this process of seeing ourselves more clearly and compassionately, our stories naturally come to clarify and unravel themselves through our inherent guidance. I believe in the great potential for healing present within that naturally shines forth within the therapeutic relationship. I welcome the opportunity to share that experience with you.

Shirin Shoai

What are your core beliefs about life? What are your beliefs about yourself? Negative life experiences can harden these stories and leave us feeling ungrounded, unsupported, and unable to express our needs—or even know what they are. Unexamined, they can lead us into self-defeating patterns, unsatisfying relationships, and a sense of limited potential.

In our work together, I respect the whole gamut of your experience, from light to dark. Through gentle inquiry into your thoughts and feelings—with some emphasis on your body’s sensations as they arise in the moment—my hope is that you’ll become interested in your emotional responses and take advantage of opportunities for self-compassion. With practice, curiosity and awareness can bring you real acceptance, relief, and change.

Susannah Harris

My role as a psychotherapist is to help clients acknowledge and harness their innate strengths in order to attain or sustain the well-being they are looking for. What holds us back? What keeps us returning to habitual patterns that do not serve us? Through the exploration of self, new possibilities emerge, in how we view ourselves, how we relate to others, and how we respond to challenging circumstances in our lives.

By attuning to the individual needs of each client, I encourage them to take risks, guiding the therapy to be most beneficial to their unique situation. I create an atmosphere where diversity of all kinds is celebrated and supported. My client-centered approach empowers people to be able to live life fully with compassion, curiosity, and commitment.

Tamuz Shiran

Bio forthcoming.

Yin Li

Therapy can be challenging, scary, healing and meaningful all at the same time. I draw from various theoretical orientations: psychodynamic, relational, somatic and family systems. I hold that we are deeply impacted by our context. Our family of origin, cultural background, ethnic heritage, and larger community can be wounding and a source of strength. My approach is supportive, compassionate, engaged and, at times, directive. In our work together, it is my hope that you will feel more expansive, with greater awareness and clarity of your thoughts, emotions, and desires.