We provide counseling in the form of dream interpretation, relationship advice, and individual and couple counseling. Our counseling is available in four pathways: 1) in person, 2) email 3) online by Skype or Zoom call, or 4) by telephone with prior online booking. To get started, please send us a message via our contact page.
Marsha Hudson, Ph.D.
Counseling and Dream Work1 hr sessions | Fees on a sliding scale
Dr. Hudson’s counseling draws upon her gestalt training and her dream work practice. She earned a certificate as a Gestalt practitioner in 2001 after studying with the San Francisco/Santa Cruz Gestalt Institute and has used that training in her work as a dream worker. She is a professional dream interpreter with a certificate from the Marin Institute of Projective Dreamwork (2005) and has facilitated dream groups in Santa Cruz for more than 15 years.
Dr. Hudson’s approach to dream work with individuals as well as with groups draws upon Jungian principles and recognizes that we are always imaginatively engaged with the world presented in the dreamer’s dream memory, and as such, we are always projecting onto the dream itself. Thus, she and her clients employ some version of the statement, “if this were my dream” to introduce a suggested meaning for an image in the dream. She was drawn to focus on dream work as the core of her counseling because of her commitment to social and climate justice work and the recognition that dreamwork is one of the most direct pathways to the unconscious and the understanding of implicit bias.
Dr. Hudson has a Ph.D. in comparative literature from UC Berkeley and has taught writing and women studies for thirty years. This background in literature and languages, including American, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, and Ancient Greek, has contributed depth to her familiarity with archetypes and symbols. When dreams are submitted online, she and Dr. Brown often collaborate to develop an interpretation.
Have Questions? Interested in an Appointment?
Norman M. Brown, Ph.D.
Individual and Couples Counseling1 hr or 90 min. sessions | Fees on a sliding scale
Dr. Brown has studied and applied many systems of counseling since 1961 when he first began reading Freud and Franz Kafka in German. His approaches to understanding human nature began with Freudian, Jungian and neo-Freudian psychodynamics and dream interpretation, including phenomenology of imagery and symbolism, first applied to German literature in his first MA and PhD and continuing from 1964 to the present. His central focus on emotional dynamics began with Gestalt Therapy and men’s groups in 1972 and graduate counseling raining in 1973, combined with marriage and family systems counseling, leading to his Marriage and Family Therapy license in 1976.
The broader and deeper scope of his MFT knowledge and applications began with teaching upper level Psychology of Love Relationships 1989-2010. This led to intensive study of Silvan Tomkins’s Darwinian emotional dynamics theories and eventually his second PhD and a pioneering textbook combining social and biological science research with practical applications (2000). Emotional dynamics, added to the psychodynamic focus on making unconscious thoughts and feelings conscious, combined with dream interpretation are central in his approach to individual and couple counseling, which he also offers via Skype. He pays attention to dreams as a higher voice to supplement client’s conscious intentions. He has over 45 years of experience doing therapy and an ongoing commitment to his own personal growth.
He loves the process of emotional attunement (i.e. empathy) with clients, from adolescents to seniors, and specializes in enhancing emotional fluency for both men and women (focus of Love and Power Institute workshops) and in personal and relationship issues among adult children whose parents divorced.
Norman offers hour and hour-and-a-half sessions with fees on a sliding scale, with the goal that each session should reach a point of significant new understanding, which can then be strengthened by a period of self-reflection.
Have Questions? Interested in an Appointment?
Ask Dr. Sleeveheart: Tips for Navigating Relationships.
Are you dealing with beginning, growing, repairing, revising, ending or recovering with any emotional relationship, whether friendship, collaboration, romance, coupling or family? Dr. Sleeveheart, aka Dr. Norman Brown can provide targeted advice for managing many of the rough spots on these life paths, though not all, in consultation with Dr. Marsha Hudson. If the response to your issue can fit into a short, written response (see examples of earlier work), we’ll answer it on the spot.
Look into our relationship questions for examples. If it requires a lot of back and forth discussion, we’ll let you know that it needs to be billed as counseling and expand from there. If it’s outside of our expertise, we’ll tell you that.
To ask Dr. Sleeveheart a question about relationships:
● Click on the button below to Contact Us, and choose the category for Relationship Questions.
● Type your question into the message box with as much detail as you wish.
● If we can answer your question in a few email responses, we’ll request a Venmo payment of $20.
● Our response may be initially to ask you questions for further information to provide you with the best answer.