Andrew Summerer

My Name is Drew Summerer, and I use he/him pronouns. I am a licensed psychologist in Portland, Oregon. I completed my doctorate in clinical psychology from an APA accredited program at George Fox University 2019. My clinical experience primarily comes form university, community mental health, and group practice settings where I have had the opportunity to work with a a broad range of populations, presenting concerns, and clinical diagnoses. My approach to psychotherapy is integrative, meaning I frequently pull from the wisdom of various evidence-based theoretical, philosophical, and empirical approaches to inform the uniqueness of each encounter. However, I find most grounding in a collection of clinical theories or sensibilities known as relational psychoanalysis. These theories emphasize the significance of formative relationships, experiences, and other social and contextual processes in the development of the mind--they also honor the relational context and process in which healing and growth emerges. With less jargon, I seek to create a relational space characterized by empathy, curiosity, and appreciation for complexity and paradox. I try to help my patients hold tensions and honor multiple (often times conflicting) emotional realities. My hope is to cultivate a stance of tenderness, warmth, and understanding towards emotion-states and parts of yourself you least like to experience, and to engage a meaning making process that allows insight, grief, and liberation. I tend to work well with individuals who desire to cultivate insight, expansion, and understanding of their self-experience and are motivated to be an active participant in this endeavor. Many skillful psychotherapists utilize approaches that emphasize interventions such as specific homework and learning coping skills and strategies. I certainly offer such assistance at times, particularly to help regulate intense and unbearable emotions states. However, my approach is less oriented around skill development and offering advice. I seek to cultivate a unique and specified therapeutic relationship and working alliance that supports your ability to both move through and bear your suffering in the direction of greater freedom, honesty, acceptance, genuineness, curiosity, and compassion.