Lakeshore Helps Clients Achieve Dreams

“Lakeshore Helps Clients Achieve Dreams”

Pioneer Press Evanston, page 12 | July 16, 1998

When Lakeshore Counseling Center was conceived as an idea, its original founder, Diane Ofarim, was following a ‘dream.’ She wanted to work therapeutically in a way that would facilitate her clients actualizing their ‘dreams,’ such as professional success and meaningful relationships.

After beginning her practice, Diane discovered she was clinically ‘gifted.’ Highly successful in assisting clients analyze and resolve inhibitors of success, she began working with individuals at whatever fee they could afford. An agreement accompanied the therapeutic work. If treatment produced financial improvement, the client agreed to eventually have her fee reflect it. Her practice grew quickly and other clinicians were brought on board. If you were highly motivated, but without sufficient income to pay, a sliding scale fee was arranged.

The same commitment is in place today as it was 22 years ago – commitment to successful treatment with concrete results that emerged as a ‘dream’ initially in her undergraduate college years. She earned a masters in clinical psychology and later attended a four-year post-graduate training program at the Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis. It was there she learned to do deeper work, not simply the amelioration of symptoms. She supplemented her formal academic training by being in her own analysis for years, to better serve her clients through self-healing and self-knowledge. Adding her academic credentials to numerous employment situations in which very difficult, deprived, neglected and delinquent individuals were dealt with, she has forged herself into a dynamic and capable clinician.

Her colleague and clinical partner, Monica Garcia, works in a similar way. Garcia received a masters in social work and, after supervision, became a licensed clinical social worker. Her post-graduate career included training in England, at the Anna Freud Centre, which specializes in facilitating positive development in children, adolescents and their families. Prior to joining Ofarim in practice, Garcia worked with children, adolescents and adults on both an in-patient and out-patient basis. She has experienced outstanding success with adolescents and young adults making the transition from teen-age years to adulthood.

One of their areas of expertise is found in the close coordination of therapy offered at times between Garcia and Ofarim. Together they know how to deal with developmental issues and actualizing one’s potential, whether it is a family or individual matter. Their work covers a large range of identifiable common human issues that can occur in a lifetime. Their ability to coordinate different kinds of services, such as individual and family therapy with children and their parents accounts for part of their success. The work produces desired results for both families and individual.

In addition, they offer expertise in unique areas such as early parent loss, the resolution of traumatic developmental conflicts, premarital counseling, marital counseling, infertility and adoption issues, as well as interracial and interreligious and extended family issues.

The whole experience of working at Lakeshore Counseling Center can be enjoyable. Their offices are warm, inviting and private. Everything is strictly confidential, and a safe environment is offered to each and every person. Clients are respected and viewed as worthwhile, valuable human beings from start to finish.