Greg Hertz

Connect with your true self

Recurrent emotional pain is calling us to know something essential in ourselves that we are having difficulty making contact with. That difficulty comes from ingrained patterns of dissociation that we learned in order to preserve connection. In formative times, certain feelings were unsafe for us to express and we learned to hide these parts from others and even from ourselves. That was once a survival strategy, but now deprives us of ease, energy, and belonging.

Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy

In psychoanalytic psychotherapy, we address suffering through essential personal growth. A carefully attuned relationship supports us to become aware of challenging and hidden states. Together, we listen to moods, beliefs, associations, fantasies, memories, dreams, and the body. We discover in each painful or confusing part of ourselves something important about who we are and what is possible.

Together, we develop fundamental capacities of self that have been under-nurtured. Expanding our awareness of the unknown that has been determining our life empowers us to transform fundamental patterns and realize a new freedom and peace. Rather than focusing only on symptom reduction, psychoanalytic psychotherapy supports deeper personal change that can be experienced over time as greater integration, freedom, and aliveness.

About Me

I practice contemporary relational psychoanalytic psychotherapy.

Education & Experience

My training includes post-graduate coursework and supervision with the Oregon Psychoanalytic Center, an M.A. in Counseling Psychology from the Wright Institute, and a B.A. in Philosophy from Stanford. I also have a background in Zen Buddhism, which inspires my emphasis on presence and openness to the unknown.

I offer in-person sessions in Southeast Portland. More about my approach can be found on my website: greghertzpsychotherapy.com.