Sean Monsarrat, M.A., M.F.T.

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To contact Sean, e-mail him at: smonsarratmft@gmail.com
 

My lifelong abiding curiosity has been to understand what it means to be a human being. My own path of discovery began in a family marked by distinct advantages and also marred by dysfunction, abuse and neglect. Like so many other people, I was able to raise coping mechanisms that helped me to survive but ultimately proved personally debilitating and sometimes deleterious to others. I had also from a young age a sharp sense of self-awareness and I struggled all along the way to understand what beset me and take corrective action.

 

Nevertheless, the day came in my late 20s when I had to concede complete defeat. It was from this place of pain, confusion and despair that I asked for and found the help of understanding, supportive and wise contemporaries. I was able to regain my senses, amend my errors and missteps, and move through the world in a renewed and vastly improved way. Still, I was unable to shake deep emotional suffering, find and sustain a soulful and intimate relationship or meaningful and fulfilling work. I ultimately found I was unable to find my way through these issues on my own and I decided to take a suggestion from a friend and consult an astute psychotherapist.

 

Thus began a journey on a path of learning, healing and growing that eventually led me to graduate school and a class in Psychosynthesis. I was struck by how my own experiences fit into the model of a human being and the healing process so astutely described by Dr. Assagioli, Ann Gila and John Firman. I knew I had found a theoretical orientation I could grow and work from and now, in Psychosynthesis Circle, a group where I can continue to learn and develop as a practitioner.

 

I earned a Master of Arts degree in Integral Counseling Psychology at the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco. Drawing from the major spiritual traditions of the East and West, recent cultural and social sciences research, and the innovations made by contemporary psychoanalytic, humanistic, systemic and transpersonal psychologies, the CIIS Integral Counseling Psychology program views psychological healing and growth within the larger context of spiritual unfolding. The program is experiential, culturally sensitive, and centered on the inner work necessary to become a healer. I completed clinical training in child, individual, couples, family and group therapy at the Center for Creative Growth in Berkeley and New Perspectives Center for Counseling in San Francisco. Prior to a career in psychology, I spent more than two decades as a journalist in Boston, New York City and San Francisco.