BINA BREITNER
M.A. | L.M.F.T. Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist
My job is to help people live more happily. I listen on several levels, so we can understand together what is troubling you, what you would really like to be and to do, what might be holding you back, how your relationships could provide richer and safer support, and what matters most in your life. I practice in Tucson AZ and find phone, FaceTime, and Skype sessions to be very productive.
Since my training and license are in marriage and family therapy, I see people as part of their "systems" -- their history, family, culture, beliefs, current relationships and jobs.... it's an ecology, so any little change alters, and can improve, the whole. (There is hope!)
I've worked as a professional musician (viola) and as a writer, so artists talk easily to me. I also speak Spanish and lived/worked in South America, which expanded my insight across cultures. I work productively with anger issues, assuming anger is trying to tell people something important about their own needs.
I've been in private practice for several decades. I earned an M.A. in Psychology from The New School in New York City, followed by three years of post-master’s training at The Kantor Family Institute in Cambridge MA, several internships, and a national exam for licensure.
While managing my private practice, in Boston, I also performed professionally as a violist, taught viola and chamber music at The Longy School of Music (now at Bard College), and co-founded the conservatory’s Mind/Body Department, which I chaired for five years and for which I created two biweekly seminars: “Psychological Aspects of Being a Musician,” and “The Enhancement of Self in Performance.” In these seminars, young musicians explored the effects on their lives of a career in music and tried out different kinds of support the world offers performing artists. For more details, please see SERVICES/seminars.
In 2004, I moved back to the Southwest, where I grew up. Since then, I've worked in Silver City NM and now in Tucson AZ while writing a blog (WRITINGS/blog), essays (WRITINGS/essays) and two books (WRITINGS/books). I am licensed in three states: Arizona (# 15234), New Mexico (# 0108841), and Massachusetts (# 1150).
I meet with people in person, or (throughout the U.S. and internationally) on Skype, on FaceTime, and on the telephone.