Us
I believe you are powerful—that you can change your circumstances and experience. I will work closely with you, trying to understand what it’s like to be you, so your life can be more like you want it to be – and so you can understand better how, and why, it is as it is.
I am open and non-judgmental. I listen well, and bring a curiosity—and a refusal to judge—to your experience that can help you perceive choices and options you didn’t know were possible.
I want to know what it is like to be you. If we decide to work together, we will use what you tell me, and our relationship, to explore. I’m particularly interested in internal conflicts—as, for example, when we “want” one thing but do another—and in the unconscious—those things we don’t know or understand about ourselves, and about who, why, or how we are. You can learn more about how I work here.
I am particularly interested in oppositions, dualities, and spectrums—love and hate; shame and pride; pleasure and pain; vanilla and kink; monogamy, polyamory, and ethical, consensual non-monogamy; and so on. My clinical experience is that binaries are rarely as clear—or as binding—as we might imagine, and often, exploring how we relate to them can be fruitful—even liberating.
I prefer to see people more than once a week, and will work with you to establish a fee that feels reasonable and fair. If we can’t agree on a fee, I will try hard to find someone with whom you can.
You
My patients struggle with relationship problems, shame, anxiety, depression, out-of-control behavior, “sex addiction,” other addictions, childhood trauma and sexual abuse, and all sorts of other challenges. I have training in and experience working with people who have been arrested for sexual and other behavior, and I have worked both with sex workers and with those who patronize sex workers.
I work affirmatively with all people, regardless of how they relate to questions of (and concepts of) gender and sexuality and race and ethnicity.
Me
My name is Josh Wolf-Powers (he/him). I’m a psychoanalyst, having completed a lengthy training in psychoanalysis at New York’s Psychoanalytic Training Institute of the Contemporary Freudian Society. I’m also a licensed clinical social worker, and have been trained as a clinical trauma professional. I have worked in inpatient and outpatient settings with people facing a wide range of challenges. I have a bachelors degree in religion from Columbia University‘s School of General Studies, and masters degrees in business administration and social work from New York University‘s Stern School of Business and Silver School of Social Work, respectively.
My practice
I have a private practice at Union Square, on 12th Street, between Broadway and University Place. I am affiliated with the Sexuality, Attachment and Trauma Project, a group of therapists expert in working with people’s relationships to their sexuality, informed by an understanding of the importance of their histories of attachment and trauma, and I’m the director of the SAT Network—a global network of such therapists.
I also am the founder and director of Union Square Psychotherapy, a diverse group of therapists practicing near Union Square.
