“Why am I not happier?”
Everything’s in place, yet the good life is still a distant dream with less clarity and/or contentment. All that work wasn’t for nothing, though it can too often feel that way.
If something’s off, seems somewhat missing, or if a super-strength has become a weakness, welcome!
Life’s easier with a thought-partner, a confidante - someone unrelated yet highly-related, with whom meaning & purpose are inspired by your ambition and the many conflicting emotions lurking underneath.
This is my role: thought-partner/confidante. It’s what I do, and what I offer you.
Coaches v. Psychoanalysts
Many work with coaches. The best are good listeners who ask the right question at the right time. They focus on goals.
Psychoanalysts focus on the thoughts & feelings associated with human longing and achievement, things like success, money, relationships, self-esteem, family, and sexuality. Each aspect acts and interacts in highly-personalized ways. It’s a lot, and requires specialized training.
If you want to achieve a specific goal, hire a coach.
If you want to cultivate an understanding for who you are, what you think/feel (and why), where goals are achieved a bit less directly, hire me.
Many extraordinarily successful people have done both.
What is Better Indeed?
Better Indeed is a private practice where meaning & purpose are inspired by your ambition and emotion.
It’s run by me, David Rudolph Schoenberger, a seasoned business executive and licensed, classically-trained psychoanalyst.
I offer free in-person or virtual consultations for us to assess the fit together. If it doesn’t feel right, or I don’t believe I can be of help, we move on.
Who am I?
I’m a top-school MBA who, after 20 years of managing products for the Fortune 500 and the scrappiest startups, left the building to run my own thing, working with highly-ambitious people as an analyst.
Having survived my own family and having lived through many corporate battles, I’ve first-hand appreciation for the day-to-day and the work/life imbalance of high-striving professionals - which has proven extraordinarily helpful to my clients.
This hybrid (i.e., corporate + clinical background) is unique and allows me to understand much of your context in a way those who’ve not been there themselves simply cannot.
For more information, please see my profile on Psychology Today.
What’s it like working with me?
This is heresy but I never fully trusted the therapists I met, not their business model nor their math - a 45-minute hour, really?
I always thought (or wanted to think) I could fix things myself, faster - and far more cheaply. I tried and failed on my own many, many times. After too many DIY attempts that ended in heartbreak, I gave in and found someone who changed my life. At the end of our work together it dawned on me I might one day do this for others. I suppose I’ve become a convert and, now, a practitioner.
I’m different with each client, changing gears to meet you where you are at any moment. I’m not an old-school analyst who doesn’t speak; I speak! But, moreover, I’m a great listener and will do so patiently while also, respectfully, calling bullshit as necessary. I’ll follow you down any road, mapping it out quietly, so that it might be visited again. We’ll emerge from these journeys together, scathed perhaps, but also (always) enlightened.
Classical psychoanalysts don’t divulge, but (sometimes) I do. More often I’ll give back by stringing together relevant bits & pieces of what you’ve shared over time in a super-meaningful way to deepen your self-understanding and engender a true appreciation for what wasn’t (fully) there before.
I view our work as a sandbox for exploring your humanity, your subjectivity. Ours will be a relationship like no other - one that provokes, occasionally frustrates and often fascinates. It will deepen and widen over time - even after we’ve both moved on. Yes, I believe in endings, and will work to ensure ours ends well and in a reasonable timeframe.
With whom do I work?
I work with corporate execs at the top of their game (or working feverishly to get there) and startup founders/leaders.
I also treat academics and creatives: artists, designers, engineers, musicians, actors, writers, directors and producers.
A portion of my practice is dedicated to those in financial need.
What’s my specialty?
This is like asking someone what music they like, hoping they won’t say “everything!” (I won’t.) I’ve worked well with those suffering, slightly or severely, from one or more of the following conditions:
Anxiety/Stress
Depression/Dysthymia
Dissociative Disorders
Hypomania
Hysteria
Impulse Control Issues
Mood/Personality Disorders
Narcissism
Obsessive-Compulsive Disorders
PTSD
Sadomasochism
What’s my theoretical bent?
While a classically-trained Freudian, my studies take me far and wide, theoretically. I’m constantly deepening my clinical toolkit, borrowing from other branches of psychology (especially cognitive science) as well as from the humanities.
What do I believe? Perhaps that great humanist Carl Rogers said it best and his words, if anyone’s, embody my practice as well as my faith:
“The good life is a process, not a state of being. It is a direction, not a destination.”
Getting Started
The hardest part is often the very start, so I tried to make it as easy as 1-2-3:
Step 1: Send me an email, or call/text me, or just click on this form.
Step 2: I will respond to your inquiry and schedule a free consultation: a meeting or a call.
Step 3: We determine fit and, if it’s good, find a mutually convenient time to begin our work.