BACKGROUND
Fran D’Agostino has been practicing as a psychotherapist since 1980. She is, first and foremost, interested in listening to what you need and then helping you obtain the skills that will help you make the desired changes in your life.
After graduating from Fordham University School of Social Work in NYC, she started her career as a school therapist in two NYC highschools. She concurrently studied family and couple therapy at The Institute for Mental Health Practitioners and later received training in group work at the Institute for Sociotherapy.
She went on to work and become a clinical supervisor at St Lukes/Roosevelt Hospital in their Phobia and Anxiety Disorder Program. That seven year experience was professionally and personally transformative. It was there that Fran learned about the profound power of “what we tell ourselves” and how that affects emotions, body physiology and behaviors. She continued on in her professional training at the Institute for Core Energetics founded by Dr. John Pierrakos and in 1989, she became a certified analyst. Dr John Pierrakos was the cofounder with Alexander Lowen of “Bioenergetics”. Both psychiatrists were students of Wilhelm Reich.
Reich was one of Freud’s star students and is the author of the book, Character Analysis, which continues to be considered a seminal work. Reich was the first western psychanalyst to introduce the concept of armoring in understanding a person’s energetic defensive style in giving and receiving love, or being more open or closed to one’s life force. The understanding of the body/mind /emotion connection to health and healing is now becoming main stream. Reich, Lowen and Pierrakos were among the forward thinkers who helped move that awareness along. Since 1989, Fran has also studied hypnosis, mediation and meditation.
Fran has been in private practice in Manhattan and in Great Barrington, MA for the past eighteen years and is now opening her practice in Clifton Park, NY. She has worked with people from all walks of life.