Michael Lembaris, PsyD

Updated: October, 2024

I am a psychologist and a psychoanalyst. I graduated from the California School of Professional Psychology in San Diego in 2015. I graduated from the San Diego Psychoanalytic Center's five year candidate program in 2021 where I am voting member. I'm also a member of the International Psychoanalytical, American Psychoanlytic, and Genesee Valley Psychological Associations. I remain regularly engaged in psychoanalytic learning relationships and seminars which is to say that my love for and understanding of this work continues to deepen. It's a pleasure to share it.

Psychoanalysis helps patients to free themselves from reliving the same difficulties again and again. The treatment aims at getting hold of the thinking processes that invisibly perpetuate those patterns. To get hold of a thinking process is to come to name a thought or idea that was previously implicit, and to glimpse the active way in which this idea was being made invisible in the first place. Exercising the mind like this is hard work. The motivation to persevere stems from the tangibility of the recovered ideas, which are felt as aspects of one's mind now freed for productive use. This restores capacity to live meaningfully.

Please feel free to call for a consultation. I work hard to make this treatment accessible to those seriously interested in learning how to live differently.

Sincerely,

Dr. Lembaris

Supervision and Consultations

I offer clinical consultations and supervision for mental health clinicians working with patients in once or twice weekly psychotherapy. Some of those who find such services helpful are interested in learning more about psychoanalytic thought and practice, while others are more concerned with an immediate clinical difficulty or impasse. Depending on your needs, we can meet a few times or more regularly.

To present one's work to an independent mind is to risk exposing one's own limitations and unconscious investments. I believe that learning to take, tolerate, and appreciate this risk is part and parcel of our professional growth.

I follow the supervisory practices and philosophy built into a number of psychoanalytic traditions. This involves the use of process notes prepared by the supervisee ahead of time. Having such notes allows for clearer, more powerful demonstrations of various dynamics alive in the treatment than tends to be possible with less formal supervisory structures.