Dr. JoAnn Melanie Magdoff

I collaborate creatively with individuals and couples: together we work to identify their hidden strengths. New communication strategies help them listen more effectively to themselves and to each other. We create positive alternative behaviors to their ingrained, habitual ineffective or destructive patterns of interaction. New behaviors and understanding strengthen each individual's sense of self as well as enhancing the couple or family. rnrnrnWorking with couples I may also focus on pre-marital issues, infertility or efforts to maintain a collaborative, non-acrimonous separation. I will help the couple access the wisdom of accumulated experience they often overlook or ignore.

I am particularly attuned to helping individuals and couples achieve balance in their careers and lives. Times of major life-cycle changes including the first year of marriage, the birth of a child, retirement, aging, frail parents, death of a spouse, require thoughtful intervention.

I address developmental challanges late adolescentsface as they work through separating/individuating when they prepare to leave home. The 'Empty nest' has its own challanges couples confront. Learning to identify and incorporate energy bound up in various forms of depression is another area of my therapeutic expertise.