22 Hilliard Street · Harvard SquareTwo people in a room.
taking the time
to be known.
It takes two to know one.
whether you have been in therapy for years, or never at all
You do not need the right words to begin.
You are asked to choose, from a photograph and a few paragraphs, someone you may one day tell things you have never said aloud.
It makes sense if that feels frightening. The wish to be seen and the fear of being seen often arrive together. That fear does not mean you are not ready.
“In every consulting room, there ought to be two rather frightened people.”
W. R. Bion
Individual therapy
Weekly psychoanalytic psychotherapy for adults, on Hilliard Street or by video.
for twoCouples therapy
For partners caught in the same conflict, or drifting apart.
for parentsParenting consultations
A few meetings to think about your child, and about yourself as a parent.
starting 2027Groups
A men’s group and a parents group, led by Dr. Schmiedl-Neuburg; an open process group; and theme groups on living between cultures, grief and loss, and mid-life and change. New groups will open over time.
To begin: a free half hour by video, with no obligation. Fees.
Pillars of practice
Core Values
Our commitments to clinical practice, teaching, and professional dialogue.
A room for everyone
We welcome people across cultures, languages, faiths and ways of life.
Reduced fees are part of that commitment, not an exception to it.
Inclusivity
Welcoming diverse backgrounds, identities, and lived experiences into a supportive clinical and pedagogical space.
Depth
Honoring the complexity of human experience through psychodynamic exploration that moves beyond surface symptoms.
Pluralism
No single theory has the last word. We draw on the breadth of psychoanalytic thinking, and keep the conversation between them open, staying curious about what each can help us see.
Community
Fostering ongoing dialogue and professional connection among patients, supervisees, fellows, and practicing clinicians.
Keren Porat, Psy.D. · Founder
A letter from the founder
Welcome.
We are living through an unusual moment. Between social media and now AI, we have more ways than ever to reach one another, and yet many of us feel increasingly alone. I find myself thinking about the places where we can come to know one another over time, and what it takes to create and sustain them.
I was a young mother when I first encountered psychodynamic therapy, at the PGFP (Postgraduate Fellowship Program), founded by Malcolm Owen Slavin at MIP (the Massachusetts Institute for Psychoanalysis), which he co-founded. It changed my life. I have been trying to make that experience possible for others ever since, and CIPSE is my way of carrying it beyond my own consulting room.
I founded it in 2025 hoping to create a home both for people seeking therapy and for the clinicians who offer it. Our small beginning on Hilliard Street, near Harvard Square, carries a longer wish: a community where people can find thoughtful, sustained care, and where clinicians have colleagues to think with honestly and keep learning alongside.
Much of what I know about the art of practice I learned from my late mentor, Mal. He loved his patients, and he loved teaching. He was deeply thoughtful and down to earth, and he encouraged us to think creatively, speak openly, and develop minds of our own. He took our thinking seriously, even when it differed from his. All of CIPSE’s core staff learned and grew under his mentorship, and his influence is part of how CIPSE came to be.
Part of my hope for CIPSE is to preserve that creative freedom: room to follow something we cannot yet explain, to question an idea we have relied on, and to recognize when another person sees something we have missed. I want CIPSE to be a place where clinicians find their own voices while becoming more attentive to the people they work with. Independent thought and the capacity to listen need each other. So does room to be changed by the encounter.
How we think about the workPsychoanalysis as an art.
Psychoanalysis is not a procedure performed on a patient. It is a clinical discipline and a creative one, closer in spirit to poetry, painting and music than to a protocol. Much of what we work with arrives before language: in the body, in the air between two people, in the symptom that has been speaking for years without being heard.
Therapy needs freedom: a place serious enough to hold suffering, and alive enough for something new to happen.
Over the years, I have learned to be careful about what I think I know about someone. There is always more to discover, including things neither of us could have anticipated. Sometimes, as we come to know the life someone has lived, a life they have not yet been able to live begins to take shape. That possibility still moves me, and it gives this work much of its meaning.
If you write to us, I will read your message myself. If cost is a worry, say so. That belongs in the conversation too.
You do not need a polished account of why you are here. We can begin with whatever brings you, including what is still difficult to put into words.
Warmly,
Keren
Prefer email? Write to hello@cipsegroup.com.
Institute community
Scholarly & Clinical Community
Who you would meet
Small by design.
Senior clinicians and those training alongside them, with a shared belief that no single way of thinking is enough for a human life.
“The interpretation of dreams is the royal road to a knowledge of the unconscious activities of the mind.”
Sigmund Freud · The Interpretation of Dreams, 1900
Finding us
Coming In
The first step is a conversation, nothing more.
22 Hilliard Street · Cambridge
A quiet room on a quiet street, minutes from Harvard Square.
We meet in person, and by video when life makes coming in impossible.
If you are looking for therapy
Begin with a free half hour, by video.
Individual and couples psychotherapy, in person on Hilliard Street or by video. Reduced fees available.
If you are a clinician or student
Supervision, community and the Fellowship.
Paid positions and a monthly peer supervision group now. The Fellowship opens in 2027; internship applications in Fall 2027.