Friday Lunchtime Program:Working With Men In Therapy: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly Presented by Gary Gross, LMFT

Friday February 14, 2014

Working With Men In Therapy: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly  

Presented by Gary Gross, LMFT

Working with boys and men in psychotherapy can be both frustrating and rewarding. Males tend to be less verbal, more anxious about appearing emotionally vulnerable, and many times feel they are in treatment to appease someone else, such as their parents, girlfriend, partner, spouse, or probation mandates. Males also experience a variety of cultural messages regarding masculinity, and these messages change in significant ways over time. Furthermore, internal conceptions of what it means to be a man frequently change as men age. Considering these realities, boys and men are often ambivalent or resistant to the therapeutic process. Gary Gross' talk will be both a presentation and a discussion about what has worked and what has created problems in our treatment of boys and men in the therapy hour.

Gary Gross, LMFT, has been involved professionally with the concerns of boys and men since the late 1970's when he helped to organize the first California Men's Gathering and taught coursework on Men and Masculinity at City College of San Francisco. He obtained an M.A. in Sociology in 1976 and an M.A. in Clinical Psychology in 1984, and he has been in private practice since 1987. He has worked at several, local non-profit agencies, including Family Service Agency of Marin, where he developed the only treatment program in Marin County for adolescent sexual offenders. In his private practice in Kentfield, Gary Gross specializes in working with boys and men, and he provides consultation to groups and other professionals regarding best practices with this population. To learn more about his work with boys and men visit his website at www.garylgross.com.