Rebecca Shapiro, MA

EDUCATION

PsyD Student, Wright Institute 

I am a psychoanalytic psychotherapist working with adults and couples presenting with a range of diagnostic considerations and difficulties with emotions and relationships. Specific areas of interest include anxiety, depression, substance use, sexual abuse, and dissociative disorders. I also enjoy working with questions about sexuality and culture, particularly as each relates to couple relationships. While diagnosis may be a useful starting point in some cases, I find that curiosity and engagement with anything arising in therapy is almost always more helpful than evaluative criteria.

In general, I am interested in how individuals and couples understand and articulate their experiences and how in the process of therapy, we modify these experiences, providing increased freedom over time. Because I believe the therapeutic relationship is itself foundational to change, I am sensitive to how the language we use together develops and shifts within the relationship as it comes to accommodate emergent understanding. 

Additional to the Wright Institute where I am currently a Clinical Psychology doctoral student (’20-’25), I am in the Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Training Program at the San Francisco Center for Psychoanalysis. I graduated from Reed College (’07-’11) where I focused on cultural studies, specifically, art history and the anthropology of religion. I also completed pre-medical requirements and find that neurobiology is a useful adjunct to psychoanalytic thinking.