David Collins

I practice from a psychodynamic framework. I believe none of us is just one person, but rather a dynamic mix of all the life experiences that have brought us this far. Sometimes those different histories conflict with each other and slow our progress through life. For instance, rationally we may know that we are capable of a more advanced job but the remnant of a browbeaten child within finds it difficult to stand up for the recognition we deserve. Or maybe we possess a great love inside but a lonely core makes us feel unworthy of an intimate relationship.

As we grow up, we must make compromises with our family, our friends, and our community. Especially the compromises made in early childhood can lead to beliefs about ourselves that alienate us from our true selves. Almost every one of us comes to adulthood believing we are a very different person than the true version of ourselves that will bring us peace and liveliness.

Through our weekly therapy sessions together, I will support you as you work to understand these inner selves and discern which compromises you have made that may be holding you back from a more satisfying life. At times, it may feel like you are toiling blindly, working to challenge life-long assumptions of your own true character built upon compromises made in early childhood.

I have selected the M.C. Escher lithograph “Drawing Hands” as a visual metaphor for my practice. In psychotherapy, we are both the tool for change and the object being worked upon. Only after we have “drawn” in ourselves a new awareness, might we be able to understand what the next stage will be. “Ah, now I see.”

I am a member of the College of Registered Psychotherapists of Ontario, have completed the CTP program for training in psychotherapy, and have graduated with a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Toronto. I have also worked for over twenty years as a social worker in the community, addressing issues of addiction, mental health, homelessness, and poverty.

For more information, or to schedule an appointment to see me in my office in Toronto, you can contact me directly:

Phone or Text: (416) 988-5833

Email: davidcollinsrp@gmail.com

Website: www.davidcollinsrp.ca

Address: 203 Lisgar Street,
Toronto, Ontario
M6J 3G6

Office is located in separate Coach House building accessible through alleyway off of Dovercourt Road. Detailed map will be sent to new clients before your first session.

Initial consultation: We can arrange a first appointment in person, or discuss your interests on the phone ahead of your first appointment. A brief initial consultation on the phone would be free of charge.

Phone / Skype sessions: During the current COVID19 health crisis, as well as if you are out of town for an extended period of time, we can continue your sessions via phone or Skype if you choose, until a time when it will be possible that we can meet in person again.

Fees: $150/session

Psychodynamic psychotherapy benefits from a long and learned tradition of great thinkers. To give you a better sense of the philosophy from which I practice, here are a few quotes from some of the theorists that I have studied and who inspire my work:

“The True Self is the position from which come the spontaneous gesture and the personal idea. The spontaneous gesture is the True Self in action. Only the True Self can be creative and only the True Self can feel real. Whereas a True Self feels real, the existence of a False Self results in a feeling unreal or a sense of futility.”
– D.W. Winnicott

“We develop intense attachments because we crave relatedness. The central dynamic struggle throughout life is between the powerful need to establish, maintain, and protect intimate bonds with others and various efforts to escape the pains and dangers of those bonds, the sense of vulnerability, the threat of disappointment, engulfment, exploitation, and loss.”
– Stephen A. Mitchell

“The use of empathy is inherent to the conduct of all effective psychotherapy – feeling the world from the patient’s point of view, and not according to how the therapist thinks the patient should or must be feeling.”
– Sarah Fels Usher

“The patient does not remember anything at all of what they have forgotten and repressed, but rather acts it out. They reproduce it not as a memory, but as an action; they repeat it – without of course being aware of the fact that they are repeating it.”
– Sigmund Freud