Dr. Benjamin Cornell

The central thing I offer as a therapist (beyond what you can get from a book or self-help podcast) is the benefit of another perspective—another subjective self—actively engaged alongside you in confronting your unique situation and concerns. While there's a wealth of excellent and readily available information about the general question of "how to be healthy and happy," therapy can represent a uniquely powerful opportunity to break out of entrenched patterns or explore new possibilities that were invisible or unreachable alone.

I'm a clinical psychologist licensed in Washington and New York. I work with individuals and couples struggling with symptoms like anxiety or depression, as well as with broader concerns around identity, performance, and creativity. That said, the core focus of my practice is on "relationships," defined broadly enough to include not only our direct interactions with other people, but also our own minds, memories, fantasies, feelings, phones, substances, hobbies, etc.

As a therapist, my first concern is with creating and maintaining an environment where it's possible to express anything and experience new possibilities. Within that, I would describe my "therapy style" as active but not directive, meaning I engage frequently with questions, observations, and hypotheses, and talk about the thought process behind them, but I rarely give advice, assign "homework," or guide "exercises." In other words, I'm rarely doing anything resembling a "structured treatment protocol," but I'm also pretty far from being a "blank slate." As far as I can tell, my style tends to fit people who think a lot about their relationships already, are open to challenging their assumptions, invested in understanding themselves more deeply, or who haven't found much benefit in more structured, skill-based approaches in the past.

Theoretically, I'm grounded primarily in psychodynamic, cognitive-behavioral, and Relational models, incorporating research on trauma, human attachment, and neurodiversity. In practice, that tends to mean I think a lot about how people are shaped by their emotional experiences over time, how conflicts in motivation contribute to behavior, how our conscious cognitive process interacts with our intuitive/emotional one, as well as how what happens in the therapy relationship may reflect and relate to psychological patterns elsewhere.

With couples and relational systems of two or more people, I see my role as more of a "facilitator" than a direct participant: helping reframe, clarify, or "translate" communication, identifying and disrupting counterproductive interaction patterns, and suggesting alternative approaches to one another that can lead to more satisfying connection overall.

An initial consultation is a chance for us to come to some shared understanding of your current concerns, what you're hoping to get out of therapy, and whether my approach seems appropriate for your needs. The "goal" can be as simple as "understand myself better," but everything I do and say as a therapist necessarily depends on what direction we're trying to move, so I see agreement about this direction as fundamental.