Therapist Profile

My Approach to Helping

Pain, uncertainty, misery, and feelings of being lost emerge also as we seek to find our individual path in life. However, feeling lost can be seen as a painful but hopeful sign that it is time to be found. It can indicate the need to connect with your inner Self rather than to substitute unfulfilling forms of social adjustment or premature conclusions about personal failure. My approach to finding oneself considers symptoms like depression, anxiety, and bipolarity to be "red flags" indicating your need to seek new insight into your past, present, and future. These disruptive moods are not necessarily pathological; in fact, they often foreshadow transformation and change in the form of a renewal of the personallity or an emergence of creative activity. While I am a Certified Jungian Psychoanalyst with fifteen years of clinical exprience, I often employ an eclectic mixture of current therapeutic theories to restore meaning and direction to individuals' lives. Nonetheless, I also work with dreams, symbols, films, fairy tales, paintings, and other symbolic material that have had an emotional impact on you. These sources often mirror inner unconscious issues that have yet to be made conscious, analyzed, and included in your sense of self. This emphasis works well with individuals in creative fields. Dreams do not deceive, lie, distort, or disguise; they indicate the presence of an inner voice speaking symbolically and seeking to express something that you need to know, but do not. You have an inner Self that functions as much like an eye to the future as it does an understanding of the past. Its existence argues that you are far more than the sum of your social roles and professional accomplishments. As strange as it may sound, success in the world may trigger a feeling of inner emptiness and a sense of being a fraud. My therapeutic approach focuses on you as a unique individual . It recognizes that you have a Self in the sense that there is an inner form of guidance available to you, if you have the genuine desire to connect with it. I will work with you as a guide in your journey toward wholeness, not as someone with all the answers. I realize that what we need to work on and understand lies within you, not me. I can't know anything important without your input. Our process together will be a cooperative one focused on healing and growth--both yours and mine--unfolding in an atmosphere of mutual respect and trust.

More Info About My Practice

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS: Curran, R. T. (2005) Kali, Individuation, & the Primordial Unconscious. Psychological Perspectives, 48, No. 2, 172-189. Curran, R. T. (2005) Reply to Wolfgang Giegerich's The End of Meaning & the Birth of Man. Journal of Jungian Theory & Practice, 6, ii, 63-65. Curran, R. T. (1998) 'Cat Burglar in the Topkapi Palace: The Double Binds of Therapy with Dissociative Identity Patients (two-part article) Quadrant: Journal of the C. G. Jung Foundation for Analytical Psychology, XXVII & XXVIII, 1 & 2, 65-78 & 31-48. Curran, R. T. (1995) Frogs, Princes, & Individuation: A Jungian Reading of Deliverance. Masculinities, 3, 3,46-68. Curran, R. T. (1992) Complex, Archetype, & Primal Fear: Stephen King's Use of Fairy Tales in THE SHINING, in THE DARK DESCENT (Greenwood Press), 33-46. Curran, R. T. (1991) 'Snow White,' 'Cinderella,' & 'Dracula': When the Ferris Wheel Stops, in PSYCHE'S STORIES, II (Analysis of a Child's Dream/Chiron Press), 93-110. SUPPLEMENTARY QUALIFICATIONS: I got my early clinical training at a United Way Agency (Family Resources) where I worked for six years exclusively in the area of physical and sexual abuse. I was a member for four years of an ongoing seminar at the University of Pittsburgh's teaching hospital WESTERN PSYCHIATRIC INSTITUTE AND CLINIC with a group of psychiatrists, psychologists, psychoanalysts, psychiatric nurses, and residents. We functioned as a city-wide resource for therapists working with Dissociative Identity patients. My dissertation (passed "with distinction") was titled "Multiple Personality Disorder & Jung's Complex Theory." Further, I taught a seminar in Jungian psychoanalysis to the psychiatric residents at WPIC. I have over 4,000 documented supervised clinical hours. I have been supervised by psychologists, psychiatrists, Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalysts, as well as clinical social workers. I have over 700 documented hours of academic and clinical training in my Jungian psychoanalytic training program (IRSJA), including seminars, lectures, workshops, and tutorials. As a tenured professor, I have taught courses in Jungian psychoanalysis and liteature at the University Pittsburgh since 2000. I am a senior training analyst who teaches in the IRSJA institute program in Pittsburgh where I instruct and supervise candidates. I have taught clinically-based seminars focused on dream analysis, dissociative identity, psychopathology, narcissism, and object relations as well as mythology and folkore from an archetypal perspective. I am a member of THE INTER-REGIONAL SOCIETY OF JUNGIAN ANALYSTS, the NATIONAL ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF PSYCHOANALYSIS, the PITTSBURGH SOCIETY OF JUNGIAN ANALYSTS, and the INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF ANALYTICAL PSYCHOLOGISTS. I have lived (Turkey), worked, & travelled extensively in the Near and Middle East. This cultural background should serve me well in working with Turks and Arabs who are Muslims. PHONE AND EMAIL CONTACT: Via cell-phone (412-848-0155) & email (rtcurran@pitt.edu), I am available 24/7. LOCATION: My office is located near the South Hills Village Shopping Mall. At the intersection of Ft. Couch & Washington Raod. Take a left onto Ft. Couch Road and then a quick left into Walgreen's parking lot. Go straight at that point up a small incline and you are in my parking lot. This area is immediately adjacent to Upper St. Clair, Mt. Lebanon, and Bethel Park. But it is also easily accessible from Pittsburgh. PAYMENT: No insurance; sliding scale based on income