c/o Stratton, Suite 307
330 West 58th Street
New York, NY 10019
Telephone: 212-595-5776

Elissa K. West, L.C.S.W. is a licensed clinical social worker and certified psychoanalyst, with over 25 years experience in fulltime private practice working with adults at her office and at patients’ homes. She is a clinical supervisor at the Institute for Contemporary Psychotherapy (ICP). In addition to her private practice, Elissa leads psychotherapy groups for adults in their 60’s to their 80’s and beyond. She works on a private pay basis, and may be eligible as an out of network provider. In addition, as of Fall 2018 Elissa is teaching a new, groundbreaking! course on older adulthood at ICP.

Through her empathy, interactive style, and sense of humor!, Elissa strives to develop a safe and secure relationship with each of her patients. With proper therapeutic understanding and support, you can gain relief from symptoms, discover and develop self-understanding and inner strengths, and achieve a more authentic, fulfilling life. Elissa has had the immense satisfaction of successfully treating people suffering from depression—longstanding and situational; anxiety and/or panic; current trauma and/or trauma from childhood—including sexual abuse and incest; LGBTQ issues; and issues of older aging.

Elissa has had an abiding interest in older adulthood throughout her career.  In 1996, after completing ICP’s 4-year psychoanalytic psychotherapy training program, she founded and directed the Older Adult Treatment Service at ICP. More recently she founded and currently administers a new online directory for homebound people in NYC to locate home-visiting psychotherapists in their zip code (ahahomepsychotherapy.com). Elissa’s original paper, “Being in Time: The Problem of Hope in Older Adulthood, the Last Developmental Frontier” was published in the Washington Square Institute’s journal, “Issues in Psychoanalytic Psychology,” Volume 37, 2015. She has presented this paper at the Washington Square Institute’s Lecture series; William Alanson White’s Extended Lifespan Program; the Senior Forum of the First Presbyterian Church (Fifth Avenue/12th Street); at the Institute for Contemporary Psychotherapy; and, in April 2018 at the Annual Conference of the New York State Society for Clinical Social Workers. (See below on this page for a free, downloadable PDF copy of this paper for anyone who’d like to read it, with thanks to the Washington Square Institute.*)

Prior to private practice, Elissa worked in a variety of clinical settings, including: inpatient and outpatient psychiatry units at a city hospital;  a psychiatric residential treatment center; in foster care; at a psychotherapy service for older adults; at nursing homes in many capacities. (Elissa’s full Curriculum Vitae is available upon request.)

Choosing psychotherapy can be an action plan toward health and healing. To paraphrase Rabbi Hillel: If not now, when?

Read Elissa’s paper:

Being in Time: The Problem of Hope in Older Adulthood, the Last Developmental Frontier

*Downloading this paper is for individual purposes only; express permission must be given by the IPP editor for any reproduction or dissemination of this paper.

← Back to Directory