Groups Offered at 303 Fifth Avenue, Suite 1516-7
Psychodynamic Creative Therapy Group
This interpersonal psychodynamic therapy group helps participants find a state of relaxation and clarity, beginning with brief meditative yogic breathing exercises and leading to a playful use of imagination. Subjects are encouraged, if they so choose, to bring in their own short creative pieces, such as poetry or other writing or a song to play and sing or a visual work to reveal to the group as they verbalize what it means to them. Self-states and conflicts are embodied and analyzed in an approach of empathy and mutual respect.
Number of participants: 5-10
Thursdays, 6:30-7:30 pm
Ongoing group, please email or call with inquiries.
The Solace and Dialogue of Poetry/Music for those in Grief
The group helps those in mourning connect their reflections and experiences to a poem or song. Subjects develop their own dialogue with the work, finding meaning in it that helps them mourn, particularly as it serves as spring boards for the group to help process grief, coming to terms with it through the use of imagination and catharsis. What fantasies, unanswered questions or beliefs do subjects have about their relationships with their lost ones?
Number of participants: 5-10
Sundays, 2:00 - 3:00 pm,
Ongoing group, please email or call with inquiries.
Embodied Fantasy Therapy
Embodied Fantasy Therapy explores embodiment, both in terms of becoming aware of the ongoing embodiment of one's mind (Clocan, 2015) and choosing to embody certain ideas and self-concepts, which can be queer and gender-related or focused on other beliefs, in order to ease the pain of inauthenticity, of lying about oneself.
The therapy also explores recognition of one's fundamental fantasy--everyone has one, particular to them, based on illusion, in language, unconscious (Lacan, Freud). It is not enough to know the fantasy in words. There must be a break in the symbolic chain, as the real is experienced, along with the imaginary register revealed through the body's language, impossible to verbalize in the symbolic order (Fink, 1995, Lacan, 2019). The arts and meditation/yogic breathing are utilized, helping patients to experience being, which is not the same as thinking (Lacan, 2019), developing an observing state alongside the mind's illusions and fantasies. There are also certain fantasies and desires that need to breathe and be spoken, since suffocation will only make them ghosts with a haunting talent, so that queerness and other forms of originality not be disavowed.
Dr. Dylan Marks, DSW, LCSW, MA, MSW, INDIVIDUAL SESSIONS
Dr. Dylan Marks, Private Practice
I offer individual psychotherapy in-person and online at 303 Fifth Avenue. I work with adolescents and young adults on behavioral regulation and healthy self-expression, discovering who they want to be and how to navigate the world, what that means to them. I also work with older adults on coming to terms with loss and their own conflicts regarding present relationships and themselves. I treat depression and anxiety, as well as bipolarity, OCD, addiction, ADHD, autism, schizoid and personality disorders. I help people in their pursuit of a sense of meaning in their lives, repairing or accepting relationships, overcoming addiction and grief. I work as well with couples on recognizing each other's dynamic needs, distinguishing them from wants (Winnicott, 1968).
My specialities include adolescence, working with relationship and sexual difficulties, the search for meaning in young adulthood, behavioral and cognitive change addressing self-esteem, family's systemic dysfunctions and abuse and struggles with one's own queerness and gender concepts. Meaning is explored emotionally and analytically to help the patient make healthier, more fulfilling choices and to live a richer inner life. Mindfulness is utilized for behavioral and perspectival change.
Playfulness with imaginative spontaneity is helpful when it can be freed up; thus, space is created for the patient's searching of their own vital truths and repairing through them. I help patients to improve their perspective-taking and communication in their different relationships, stopping unhealthy patterns and becoming free from harsh self-criticism, as well as idealized fantasies. Cultural and other factors are considered. Other goals often pursued are patterns of balance while feeling confluent with their feelings, being creative and authentic, observing one's feelings and thoughts without acting immediately on them or feeling that they are necessarily the truth. Finding a new perspective on oneself and a problem can alleviate symptoms and engender a process of recovery or renewal. Self-acceptance and self-expression when chosen are key, particularly with queer folk.
I accept most major insurance, including Anthem (BCBS), Aetna, Cigna, United Healthcare and Medicare with a sliding scale for out-of-pocket.