Cordelia Schmidt Hellerau, PHD

I have had the good fortune of being one of Dr. Schmidt-Hellerau’s patients. It is certainly an interesting thing to publicly talk about one’s own private therapy. I tend to be a private person. But without Dr. Schmidt-Hellerau’s help, I would never have known the happiness I have in my life. It isn’t just that she has helped me work through my problems-​it is that I can now experience a level of joy and fulfillment I would have never known without her. I tear up thinking about my life now and how full it is. Seriously. I wouldn’t have ever said I wasn’t happy before-​but its like seeing color for the first time. You just couldn’t know you were seeing in black and white until you see that first burst of color.
No therapy is necessarily easy. It is inherent in the human condition that we go over the same things again and again. Think of any difficulty you have and the question inevitably appears if you are reflective enough… Why do I keep doing this SAME thing over and over even though it causes me anxiety/​pain/​embarrassment etc. It is the work of therapy that you keep exploring hey-​why AM I doing this again and again?
So, yes therapy can be difficult in that way, because you can become frustrated with YOURSELF. It is a kind of work. But with Dr. Schmidt-​Hellerau, it has also been deeply rewarding and pleasurable. It is rare to find someone who listens in the way she does. I felt she understood something so essential about me in the very first session. I have been to many different psychologists over the years. Nothing. even. compares.
She is brilliant. I never felt intruded upon, she listened and heard what I needed. She understood what I was saying when I couldn’t articulate it yet. I saw where I was living in fear and she helped me to be brave. And always, always, I knew her heart was in it. In her quiet, brilliant way she cleared a path for me to walk down. She never needed to impose, she never used her brilliance to blind, she cared in the most quiet way. Which is what I needed. You may need something else, and I bet she would know that, too.
Two people in the field recommended Dr. Schmidt-​Hellerau to me. I have some affiliation with the field so I was lucky. I know most people are not lucky in that way. This is why this private, happy person decided to write a review.

I know Dr. Schmidt-​Hellerau in several contexts. She is a professional colleague to whom I refer patients and with whom I discuss our shared psychoanalytic work. In this way, I know how she thinks and works from my own observation and from reports from those whom I have referred to Dr. Hellerau. She is an outstanding clinician, both because of her sophisticated understanding of the human condition and also because of her acute capacity to «hear» the people with whom she works. She knows how to respond in ways that are uniquely helpful to a specific patient and she is always open to assessing her own part in the analytic work — to make it better and to correct any misunderstandings that inevitably occur between two people engaged in such a serious and intimate endeavor.
Dr. Schmidt-​Hellerau is a wonderful teacher and writer — and both of those talents bear on her clinical work demanding as they do an open and exploring mind.
It is a privilege to collaborate with her and I always look to her first when I am asked for a referral in the Boston area.
As your five star category states, Dr. Schmidt-​Hellerau is «as good as it gets» — and then some!

I was Dr. Schmidt-Hellerau’s patient for six months and would not recommend her to anyone looking for a therapist in Boston. She is very pleasant and elegant and means well, and I imagine she may very well be a good scholar of psychoanalysis in the theoretical realm. In real-​world practice, however, I found her lacking in insight, and her circular thinking was frustrating. We had exactly the same conversation on the last day as on the first. The experience was a waste of time and money.