Find Couples Psychoanalysts in San Francisco, the United States

Couples counselling works with two people, and with what happens between them. It does not treat one of them.

Both partners usually attend ¹. Couples counselling works on repeated arguments, an affair, sex, money, parenting, or a decision about separating.

It does not rule on who is right. It is not for married couples alone. Ask a practitioner which approach they use.

Everyone on this page describes their work as psychoanalysis or psychoanalytic therapy. You talk as freely as you can, and the analyst listens for patterns ². The analyst also listens for how those patterns appear between you both.

Analysis usually means several meetings a week, agreed between you and the analyst. Psychoanalytic psychotherapy uses the same ideas once or twice a week.

The work runs open-ended rather than to a fixed number of sessions.

Mission Mental Health Services (SFDPH Behavioral Health Services). Phone +1 628 754 8800. The current 2026 Behavioral Health Services handbook says most Medi-Cal members pay nothing. Members above the income limits may owe a monthly share of the cost, and some treatment can require a copayment. The service is accepting new beneficiaries through Behavioral Health Access. It gives priority to certain populations, and you must meet the Medi-Cal eligibility and service area criteria.

Usually. Partners are almost always seen together¹.

Some practitioners will see one partner alone where the other will not attend. A practitioner should still see you if you have no partner or cannot bring them³. Ask what a practitioner does when one person is unwilling.

No. Couples counselling is for people in a relationship, married or not, of any gender, living together or not. The same practitioners work with couples deciding whether to separate, and with couples who have already separated and are parenting together. Say which of those describes you at first contact.

No. The work is with what happens between two people rather than with a verdict on either of them. Effective work with couples needs its own theories and methods, drawn from research on relationships. Ask a practitioner how they handle it when you disagree in the room.

Yes, and many practitioners offer it. Couples therapy by video shows few significant differences from face-to-face sessions⁴. Symptom reduction, engagement and the therapeutic alliance are comparable.

Sitting in the same room at home suits some couples and not others. Ask what a practitioner offers.

Each practitioner sets their own fee; no published tariff applies. Our guide to what therapy costs in the United States sets out the usual ranges; ask each practitioner what a couples session costs.

Four things move a fee. The practitioner's licence, their experience, the session length, and whether you meet in a room or online.

The licence is not one national thing. Each state licenses practitioners and sets what they may do⁵. So the titles whose fees you are comparing change at a state line.

TherapyRoute holds no verified lower-fee couples service for the United States. We name none here until we verify one at its own source.

Where a practitioner states a fee on their listing, that figure is their own. Ask before the first session. Ask too whether the fee runs per session or per person in the room.

Couple therapy is an effective treatment for relationship distress, and the main models reach broadly similar results⁶.

Behavioural, cognitive-behavioural, emotionally focused and integrative behavioural couple therapy meet the criteria researchers use for a well-established treatment⁷.

Those findings describe groups of couples in studies. They are not a forecast about any one relationship, and nobody listed here can promise you an outcome.

A state board licenses marriage and family therapy and the titles that go with it⁸. No register records the approach a practitioner works in⁹. The approach is a question for the practitioner. Ask a practitioner how they work with two people, and what they do when the two of you want different things.

Both partners usually attend together.

Practice differs on what comes first. Some approaches open with a formal assessment that combines joint and individual meetings. Others use no set assessment stage¹.

Most practitioners seeing couples here cannot prescribe medication. Prescribing sits with psychiatrists and psychiatric nurses, and each state sets what a licence allows⁵.

Ask before you start whether the practitioner sees each partner alone. Ask what they do with what one partner tells them in private. Ask how you will know the work is done.

There is no threshold you have to cross first. Relationship distress is one of the commonest reasons adults seek psychotherapy at all⁶.

Distress between partners travels. It is associated with mood, anxiety and substance-use difficulties in the partners themselves, and with difficulties for children in the household¹.

Couples come with a repeating argument, with an affair, with a decision about whether to stay together, and with none of those. You do not have to agree on the problem before you make contact.

If safety is the problem at home, the routes are your state, territory or tribal coalition¹⁰, and the courts¹¹.

The title you will see is Licensed Psychoanalyst.

A practitioner must hold a current licence from the state board where they practise. See the United States page.