Online Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy

Psychoanalytic psychotherapy is individual therapy, usually once or twice a week, that treats a symptom by understanding what produces it. I am a licensed clinical psychologist and board-certified psychoanalyst, and I have practiced for over fifty years. Sessions are held online by secure video, for adults and adolescents.

A good talk with a friend genuinely helps. For moderate or severe distress, though, the relief it brings tends to be temporary — the conversation ends and the problem is still there in the morning. Talking regularly with a trained listener is different, because the listener is attending to what you are not quite saying as much as to what you are.

I work with anxiety and panic, depression and suicidal feelings, self-esteem and self-image, relationship and sexual conflicts, and difficulties with school or work. Not only the symptoms — the conflicts underneath them.

“Understanding why you feel what you feel is the beginning of lasting change.”

Conditions treated

Depression and suicidal feelings
Anxiety and panic
Self-esteem and self-image problems
Personality disorders
Marital, relationship, and sexual conflicts
Problems with school or work
Patients from adolescence to old age

The problem

When you understand the problem and still cannot move

Most people arriving in therapy already have a theory about themselves, and it is usually a decent one. They can name the pattern. They can trace it back. And they remain inside it, which is the part that is genuinely puzzling — and the part that suggests the explanation is not yet the right one, or not yet reaching the level where the trouble is actually organised.

That is because the conflicts driving a symptom sit largely outside awareness. What reaches awareness is the result: the flat mood on Sunday evenings, the anger that overshoots, the relationship that follows the same arc as the last four, the work that never feels like enough. Reasoning with a symptom rarely dissolves it, because reason was not what installed it.

Advice has the same limit. It addresses the situation you can describe, and the difficulty usually lives one level below that — which is why the same sensible suggestion can be right, and useless, at the same time.

The method

How psychoanalytic psychotherapy works

You talk; I listen for what is underneath. That sounds slight and is not. Over weekly sessions, themes recur, and the recurrence is the data — the same shape appearing in a memory, in a dream, in something that happened on Tuesday, and eventually in how you deal with me. Once the shape is visible in the present rather than only reconstructed from the past, it becomes available to change.

The frame does real work here. A fixed time each week, a listener with no stake in any particular outcome for you, and no obligation to be interesting or fair — those conditions let things be said that are not sayable elsewhere, which is generally where the useful material has been waiting.

This is the same method used in psychoanalysis, applied at lower frequency. Analysis reaches further because it meets more often; psychotherapy trades some of that depth for a commitment most people can actually sustain. For a great many difficulties, that is the right trade.

The process

What working together looks like

A free 15-minute consultation
You tell me what brings you. I tell you honestly whether I am the right person for it, and if I am not, I will help you find who is.
The first sessions
We go into the difficulty in more depth than a phone call allows — its history, when it worsens, what has already been tried. No long commitment is asked for at this stage.
Settling into a rhythm
A fixed weekly or twice-weekly time. Regularity matters more than people expect: it is what allows a theme to be picked up where it was left rather than restarted each session.
The work itself
Patterns come into focus, including how they show up between us. Symptom relief often arrives during this stretch, sometimes earlier than the understanding does.
Reviewing, and ending
We take stock periodically — whether this is still the right instrument, whether more or less frequency would serve you better. Ending is a decision we make together.

Expected results

What therapy can and cannot promise

No honest clinician can put a date on this, and I will not pretend otherwise. What I can say is what tends to change and roughly in what order: the symptom usually eases before the understanding is complete, and the understanding is what makes the relief durable after sessions stop.

Symptoms ease

Anxiety, low mood and sleep are often the first things to shift, frequently within the first months.

Reactions become legible

Feelings that seemed to arrive from nowhere acquire a history, and a trigger you can see coming.

Old patterns lose force

The familiar argument, the familiar retreat — these stop feeling like the only available move.

Relief that holds

Change worked out at the level of the conflict tends to outlast the treatment rather than fade with it.

An honest caveat: if your difficulty is long-standing and has already returned after previous therapy, once-weekly work may not be enough on its own. In that case psychoanalysis is the more suitable instrument, and I would say so rather than let a weekly treatment drift. The free consultation is where that gets decided.

Your therapist

About Dr. John J. Hartman

Dr. John J. Hartman, licensed psychologist offering online psychoanalytic psychotherapy in Washington, DC

I have practiced psychotherapy and psychoanalysis for over fifty years, and have spent much of that time teaching it — at UCLA, Michigan, and the University of South Florida, where I am currently Adjunct Professor of Psychiatry. As a Training and Supervising Psychoanalyst at the Florida Psychoanalytic Center, I am one of the analysts responsible for training other analysts.

A.B. Harvard College, magna cum laude with highest honors, Social Relations
Ph.D. University of Michigan, Clinical Psychology
Certificate Michigan Psychoanalytic Institute
FABP Board-certified psychoanalyst, American Board of Psychoanalysis
Training & Supervising Analyst Florida Psychoanalytic Center
Licensed Washington, DC (PSY200001229) · Florida · Michigan
PsyPact Telehealth authorized in participating PSYPACT jurisdictions, including Maryland and Virginia

Full credentials and appointments · scholarship and publications

Fees

What psychotherapy costs

First 15-minute consultation	Free
Individual session (50 minutes)	$325

A sliding scale is available — ask whether you may be eligible. Payment by cash, check, Venmo, Zelle, or wire. I do not bill insurance, but if your plan covers out-of-network mental health care you may be able to submit my bills to your insurer for reimbursement. Office hours are Monday to Friday, 10:00 am to 5:00 pm, by arrangement. Full fees and insurance details.

Common questions

Questions about psychoanalytic psychotherapy

What is psychoanalytic psychotherapy?

Talking therapy, usually once or twice a week, that treats a symptom by understanding what produces it. Rather than working only on the anxious thought or the low mood, it looks at the conflict underneath — much of which sits outside awareness. The method is psychoanalytic; the frequency is ordinary weekly therapy.

How is this different from CBT?

They aim at different targets. Cognitive behavioural therapy works on present thoughts and behaviour, and does that well. Psychoanalytic psychotherapy is open-ended and works on the conflict underneath the symptom. Many do well with either; those whose difficulties returned after structured treatment often do better here.

How often will we meet?

Once or twice a week, at a fixed time. Twice weekly reaches further and tends to move faster; once weekly is what most people begin with. If it becomes clear that the difficulty needs the intensity of full analysis, we discuss that openly rather than continuing out of habit.

Do you take insurance?

I do not bill insurance directly. If your plan covers out-of-network mental health care, you may be able to submit my bills to your insurer for reimbursement. A sliding scale is available — ask whether you may be eligible.

Do you work with teenagers?

Yes. I see patients from adolescence through old age, and have done so for over fifty years. For a teenager the free consultation usually includes a parent, and we agree together on what stays confidential — which matters more to the work than most families expect.

Talk with a trained listener.

The first 15-minute consultation is free, and carries no obligation. Online sessions only, for residents of Washington, DC, Florida and Michigan, and — through PsyPact — participating PSYPACT jurisdictions including Maryland and Virginia.

Call (813) 787-2048 Prefer to write first? Email Dr. Hartman

Online Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy in Washington, DC