Early Career

My career path is punctuated by both a love of learning and a desire to help people. Initially drawn to the health sciences alongside language and culture, I majored in both pharmacy (BS) and French (BA) at Purdue University. Next, interested in the idea of curing diseases, I accepted a National Science Foundation fellowship for graduate research in cancer at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), where I earned a PhD in pharmaceutical chemistry. 

I soon realized that I preferred to impact people more personally and directly than bench research allowed, so I pivoted to pursue postdoctoral studies in health policy at UCSF. Inspired, I jumped into the trenches to work as a psychiatric pharmacist, helping homeless and severely mental ill people in San Francisco’s Community Behavioral Health Service. And I’ve been directly working with people in a helping role ever since.

During my seven years in community mental health in San Francisco, I became board certified as a psychiatric pharmacist, worked at a number of community clinics, and had administrative duties. Over time, I gradually grew wary of drug companies as well as concerned about our overburdened mental healthcare system. My interests turned towards psychotherapy, in particular the effects of poverty and trauma on mental health and frameworks outside of the biomedical model to help people live better lives without the use of psychiatric medication.

Psychotherapy Training & Experience

In 1997, I enrolled at the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS) to study East-West approaches to emotional health. This program was experiential, culturally sensitive, and centered on the inner work necessary for becoming a psychotherapist. I earned a master’s degree in Integral Counseling Psychology and deepened my interests in psychodynamic psychotherapy alongside mindfulness and vipassana meditation.

My early work in private practice further fueled my interest in the impact of trauma on health, both mental and physical. In particular, I became interested in the deep yet unconscious imprints of complex developmental trauma. And that curiosity led me to pursue post-licensure training in psychoanalysis, to learn more about the unconscious and the mind-body connection.

The educational experience that has most deeply affected me is the psychoanalytic training program I completed at the San Francisco Center for Psychoanalysis. This comprehensive program—which entailed more than five years of intensive coursework, personal psychoanalysis, and supervised clinical work—has been transformative to me both personally and professionally. An incredibly immersive experience, it has significantly deepened my understanding of people including their emotions, thinking, behavior and relationship patterns. It also served as a sort of crucible from which I emerged more able to be genuinely present, authentic, attuned, and perceptive with my clients in ways I could not have previously imagined. 

Lifelong Learning

Deeply curious by nature, I continue to enjoy deepening my knowledge of how to better help the people in my practice with the particular life challenges that they bring to me. Over the past 20 years, some of these issues have been: infertility and third-party family building, pregnancy and post-partum adjustment, parenting, divorce and co-parenting, sex and porn addictions, sexual and gender identity, and emotional challenges connected to wealth and success.

I regularly engage in continuing education on the latest developments in neuroscience, clinical techniques and how we frame and understand human struggles. I love my work and feel quite fortunate to have found my passion through what has been a winding yet enriching personal and professional journey.

Some words that describe me are: warm, smart, curious, thoughtful, persistent, dedicated, adaptive, and occasionally funny, depending on who you ask. Past clients have described me as insightful and compassionate, and they say they usually walk away from our sessions with something new to think about.

Free Phone Consultation

To learn more about me and my approach to therapy, feel free to explore the other pages on this website or contact me to schedule a free, 20-minute phone consultation. I look forward to speaking with you.

Renée Spencer, LMFT specializes in psychodynamic psychotherapy. Visit Renée’s My Approach page to learn how she can help you learn from life’s challenges and derive meaning, strength, and even wisdom from them.