Individual Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis
Dr. Vorus offers weekly or twice-weekly psychotherapy to help people understand and resolve their current difficulties and provide support for important life transitions. He uses a broadly developmental approach to psychotherapy, based on the recognition that emotional growth is best facilitated in the context of a structured, supportive, insight-oriented relationship. Psychoanalysis may be recommended for more longstanding and entrenched difficulties. Psychoanalysis is a more intensive form of treatment in which patients meet 3-5 times per week and often lie on the couch, with the therapist outside their range of vision. This combination of session frequency and freedom from conversational convention facilitates greater depth and intensity in the treatment process and can lead to more profound therapeutic results.
Child and Adolescent Psychotherapy
Therapy with children and adolescents can take a number of different forms, depending on the age and needs of the child. Therapy with younger children typically uses interactive play, in which an understanding of the child’s emotional conflicts and difficulties emerges from meanings conveyed through play. Therapy with teenage patients resembles adult psychotherapy, in that the therapist and teen talk through current behavioral and emotional struggles. Practical support is often a component of adolescent therapy, especially as it relates to academic difficulties, peer relationships, college applications, etc.
Parent Guidance and Consultation
Parent guidance sessions are typically recommended as an adjunct to child psychotherapy. This allows the therapist to provide support and guidance to the parents based on his experience treating their individual child. Parents whose children are not currently in treatment may request parent consultations to gain a better understanding of their child and to help formulate and implement new, more successful parenting strategies.
Couples Therapy
Couples may seek therapy for a variety of reasons, often involving some form of “stuckness” in their partnership. This may involve irresolvable conflicts, ineffective patterns of communication, breaches of trust, and emotional changes within the couple that are troubling and difficult to understand. Dr. Vorus helps couples discover the underlying obstacles that prevent greater empathy and understanding between partners, with the goal of restoring their ability to communicate more effectively and rediscover a sense of shared meaning and purpose.
Psychoeducational and Neuropsychological Evaluation
Children are frequently referred to a psychologist due to problems that arise in the context of the school environment. While some of these difficulties may be primarily emotional, difficulties in learning can also interfere with academic and social success. Psychoeducational and neuropsychological evaluation is a comprehensive process in which a child’s cognitive, academic, neuropsychological, and emotional functioning is assessed, and a complete picture of the child’s strengths, weaknesses, and areas of particular stress and vulnerability is provided. These integrative whole-child assessments can offer parents a road map for restoring a child’s optimal academic and socioemotional functioning, including strategies for improvement, academic accommodations when needed, and referrals to appropriate professionals to shore up areas of relative weakness. Dr. Vorus offers neuropsychological evaluation to children as young as three-years-old and to adolescents and adults of all ages.
Clinical Supervision
Dr. Vorus provides clinical supervision to doctoral students, psychoanalytic candidates, and advanced professionals, at numerous training institutions as well as privately. His approach to supervision is collaborative and aims primarily to support and enable a colleague’s own intuitive capacities. Supervision is available as either a one-time consultation or through ongoing weekly meetings.