Category: START HERE (About)

Welcome to After Psychotherapy, an online mental health resource for those who may have begun their journey of self-discovery during psychotherapy and want to continue along that road now that their treatment has ended. As any good therapist would do, the posts here aim to bring you closer to those parts of yourself outside of awareness: emotions you’d rather deny or avoid, conflicts you’d prefer not to confront.

The menu selections above link to posts about basic human nature and how we operate (“Rules of the Road”), the primary emotional struggles that set us moving (“Points of Departure”), some maladaptive ways we try to manage those struggles (“Detours”), and more effective ways to do so (“Destinations”) Posts in “Society and Culture” apply these ideas to literature, education, politics, etc. The final menu selection links to the “After Psychotherapy” page on Facebook, a forum for discussing issues raised on this site.

This website is a guide for continuing your journey of self-exploration on your own. If you find you need to consult a professional, you might want to consult the post on “Choosing a Therapist” below.

Joseph Burgo, Ph.D. has practiced psychotherapy for 30 years, holding licenses as a marriage and family therapist and clinical psychologist. He earned his undergraduate degree at UCLA and his masters and doctorate at California Graduate Institute in Los Angeles. As an instructor, he has taught graduate students in psychology and supervised their training in community counseling centers. He is also a graduate psychoanalyst and has served as a board member, officer and instructor at a component society of the International Psychoanalytic Association. He spent 13 years in individual psychotherapy and psychoanalysis. This site condenses insights garnered over a lifetime of work in the mental health field, and from his own personal struggles to continue growing after his own therapy ended. As a writer, he has published two novels, both works of genre fiction released some time ago and now out of print. He formerly wrote a column on parenting for a small syndicate of newspapers in the Los Angeles area and helped develop content for the World Bank’s website, the Development Gateway.