About Eileen Dunn, Psy.D. 

I am a native Washingtonian — with the soul of a Mainer.

For over 25 years I practiced depth psychotherapy in the rich collegial community of my hometown, Washington D.C. At least once a year, I spent quiet time in the York Harbor cove of southern Maine. Summers spent exploring this rocky coast as a kid affected me indelibly.

Given my native sensitivities and intellectual curiosity, I pursued a helping profession that would allow and equip me to go on and on learning how to assist human healing and development. There is a fine and quality of life-defining line between our psychology and our spirituality for me and this belief guides my practice.

Three years ago, my family and I moved to live in Maine, and I am delighted to be living and working, empowered by technology, in the seaside village where Mother Nature rules and I feel most at home.   

I’ve worked with the range of presenting problems — loneliness, low self-esteem, existential anxiety, family of origin experience, trauma and the multigenerational transmission of it, purpose in work, hunger for intimacy, relationship difficulties, un-resolving grief, anxiety, depression, emptiness, issues with eating and sleeping and day to day energy, adult children of drug/alcohol dependent parents, and others.  There are so many ways to think and talk about ‘suffering’.

I have a special interest in working with people who have tried and been disappointed by previous efforts to seek the help they feel they need — whether with physicians, other mental health professionals, lawyers, coaches, spiritual leaders, or any kind of other.

My Philosophy  

Emotional needs come first. We all have ‘emotional inheritance’ as living members of multigenerational groups.  We all have vulnerability to failing to learn from experience or getting stuck on the path to living well within us and in relation with those who matter most. The source of our “stuckness” can vary from situational factors on the outside to the depths of who and how we are from within. These depths, which we may or may not be aware of, can control the choices we make every day – from what we decide to have for dinner to the way we choose to see the world as we do. 

When we understand ourselves at the source - the mysteries and the conflicts and confusions - difficult and persistent feelings open up naturally. The path to the highest good, the win-win, the “both-and” comes into focus and carries us, and those who matter most to us, with it.   

Love is… an ever-fixed mark that looks on tempests and is never shaken.”  

(Shakespeare Sonnet 116)  

In my experience, nothing is more illuminating when it comes to the quality of life within your soul than the risk of the real human connection with a skilled and empathic guide. 

Together we cut the path to the creative source within you that carries you always. 

There is always a way to find the meaning that sets you free.


Eileen’s Education

St. Mary’s : BA in Theologyheology

University of Notre Dame: Predoctoral Internship in Clinical Psychology

Illinois School of Professional Psychology: Doctor of Clinical Psychology

Washington School of Psychiatry: Advanced training Psychotherapy with Couples, Families, and Groups

Washington Baltimore Center for Psychoanalysis: Psychoanalyst

Internal Family Systems: Advanced Trauma Therapy for Couples and Families


Current Licenses

Washington D.C.

State of Maine


Associations

Washington Baltimore Center for Psychoanalysis

International Psychoanalytic Association

The Psychotherapy Action Network

The International Association for Psychoanalytic Self Psychology

“[Eileen’s] genuineness, inside and outside of her consulting room, is one of her most beloved capacities. She is creative and has plentiful and equal doses of sensitivity and intelligence.”

— Johanna M. Arenaza, Psy.D.