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About Ben
Benjamin Seaman is an active and dynamic member of the New York City therapeutic clinical community with training in a wide range of modalities, from relational psychoanalysis and Neurolinguistic Programming to experiential therapies such as Emotionally Focused Therapy for Couples and Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy. He is a devoted educator, assisting EFT training, leading men’s retreats, and lecturing at the university level. As a co-founder of the New York Center for Emotionally Focused Therapy (NYCEFT), he helped to produce an international summit on EFT that brought over five hundred clinicians from around the world to New York City.
Mr. Seaman’s diverse training and life experience have given depth and authenticity to his work both a therapist and educator. In his graduate courses on group work and social justice, he models authentic use of the self - invoking race, class, gender, ethnicity amid myriad identities - in clinical work as a way of helping future clinicians become change agents in the world. As a former art director at The Wall Street Journal, Mr. Seaman understands the corporate world, as well as the process of making wholesale life changes. His time living in Latin America allowed him not just to experience another culture in depth but to gain perspective on his own, and explore the limitations and strictures a cultural framework can have on relationships and our sense of self. As the son of a nuclear physicist, Mr. Seaman has a particular interest in “how things work,” and believes psychotherapy is both art and science. He combines candor and warmth with a commitment to developing workable models of experience that liberate people from limiting belief systems.
“The single most healing aspect of psychotherapy comes from the chance to have an authentic relationship with a person who is actively investigating the nature of being human, of being oneself.” We still don’t know how exactly we become who are. We know childhood, biology, and society all play a part in what makes life both wonderful and sometimes awful. And we know that what gives us the ability to face life's challenges comes down to our relationships. It is in others that we see ourselves—our beauty, our talents, our self-worth, the resources with which we address the needs of the day. What does this mean for me working with you in therapy? It means that I don't approach our relationship from a standpoint of what's wrong with you. Most likely you’ve already struggled with those kinds of questions and come up short. I wonder instead what's been wrong for you, what's been lacking for you; and I'm wondering how our working relationship could supply some of that. I'll be a witness to what life has been for you, and still is, and I will be committed to having life go a new way in our relationship. |