“Have you acted in accordance with your desire?” — Jacques Lacan, The Ethics of Psychoanalysis

My name is Isaiah David, and I am a Licensed Clinical Social Worker who specializes in psychoanalysis and psychodynamic psychotherapy. Since 2017, I have been training in these fields through a number of institutions and organizations (see Education below). My training has been in many forms and orientations of talk therapy, but my psychoanalytic approach is most informed by Freudian and Lacanian theories and practices.

I help individuals work through symptoms of depression, anxiety, rage, grief, chronic and acute trauma, mania, and psychosis. I have worked with those whose primary issues were relationship, friendship, and family difficulties as well as those dealing with body health, aging, career frustration, and political distress. Psychoanalysis is particularly equipped to examine existential questions of sexuality, gender, identity, and desire. As a psychoanalyst trained in social work, I bring a perspective that is sensitive to issues significant to marginalized groups, and have years of experience working with people of color, low-income and senior individuals, former cult members, and those in the neurodivergent, LGBTQ+, polyamorous, kink, drag, and sex work communities. 

Though psychoanalysis can help with behavioral and substance issues, it does not seek to change behaviors through force of will and strategy, but rather to explore the unconscious reasons that the behaviors exist in the first place. Psychoanalysis is a long-term engagement with the unconscious which aims for fundamental and transformational changes in one's experience of the world by means of dialogue with one's conflicting desires.