Marla Leigh Caplan Psychotherapy for the Soul
Therapy for artists and innovators in San Francisco and Los Angeles with Marla Leigh Caplan, LMFT, exploring the internal landscape of the mind

Therapy for Artists

Psychotherapy for Artists & Founders
San Francisco to Los Angeles

Discover something phenomenal.
Inspiration lives within.

Seeing Differently:
Therapy for Artists, Writers & Founders

For the artists and outsiders, misfits and beautiful weirdos who are pushing the edges of the default world...

Inviting innovative minds to think deeply, dream expansively, and explore your inner landscape with therapy that honors the unconscious, the imaginal, and the soul of creativity.

Accessing the Imaginal:
Dream Analysis & Guided Imagery

This isn’t “art therapy”—it’s therapy for artists, by an artist. 

Rather than art making as a therapeutic technique in session, therapy for creatives inspires unique insights and shifts in perspective, clarifying the vision that drives your innovative work in daily life. 

It’s therapy designed for creative people — contemporary artists, writers, musicians, founders, tech innovators and design visionaries

Whether you’re a poet or an entrepreneur, this work is for those who want to explore their inner world and the meaning behind their creative work

If you’re searching for “art therapy” but want a therapist who gets that creative minds see things differently, you’re in the right place. 

Move beyond problem-solving into deeper layers of meaning, integration, and creative awakening

Online therapy for artists based in San Francisco or Los Angeles — or creative nomads and remote tech founders with geographic independence.

Therapy for Artists: Integrating Therapy & Creative Process

Emotional sensitivity can offer exquisite openings to experience and translate your unique perspective of the world, in ways that are transformative for both the artist and the viewer.

The journey of self-understanding in psychotherapy nurtures the foundation for deeply meaningful work.

An insight oriented approach to therapy offers an exploratory framework to move through creative blocks that arise when the one thing we most need to address is ignored but refuses to go away.

This essential work of self-examination addresses the insistent presence of what feels too difficult or painful to confront alone.

Because the creative process is so deeply personal, and often intimately linked to your sense of self-worth, periods of struggle or perceived failure can feel devastating.

Depressive tendencies and poor self-esteem can make accessing and expressing your innate gifts feel almost impossible.

Therapy for artists is an invitation to engage in self-reflection, allowing your authentic creative spirit to emerge in all its multiplicity, so you can manifest work that is uniquely yours, however it takes shape.

"Art does not reproduce the visible but makes visible." — Paul Klee

A Portal to Creative Self Expression for Artists & Innovators

Artwork by Kahn & Selesnick

Symbolic Interpretation

Exploring the Archetypal through the Deeply Personal

Here is an invitation to listen closely to your own subtle undercurrents as you slow down to explore your exploring your creative impulse. In therapy for artists, this deepened self-awareness becomes a portal to creative expression.

To descend the psychic staircase and meet your shadow — as artist, writer, thinker, or seeker — is to approach the threshold of meaning.

Many artists dance at the edge of intensity, beauty, and collapse — in the pursuit of inspiration or relief. If you’re navigating that terrain, my private addiction treatment program offers a discreet, trauma-informed space for healing — without abandoning your creative self.

In the underworld of the self, the old identity is surrendered and, eventually, composted. A seed is planted in that fertile dark. And from this slow transformation, inspiration begins to stir — rising gently through the gate, awakened after a long and necessary slumber.

Within the psychodynamic inquiry that characterizes therapy for artists, there will be moments when an image, a thought, a fragment of a memory or a dream will show up without effort, appearing almost of its own accord. Slowing down to listen to and explore the meaning of this new material can be an expansive process for the spirit and intellect, making the work of art an endeavor of enlightenment.

Creativity therapy helps you explore your inner landscape — the symbolic, emotional, and ancestral layers — to create a life and body of work that feels resonant and meaningful. In this process, healing and creative realization are deeply intertwined, each informing and expanding the other.

To know yourself — your history and your potentiality — is to know the future direction of your work a a thinker, maker or writer. The more personal the descent, the more universal the work becomes. And as self understanding deepens, the tapestry of your creative vision often becomes richer, more nuanced and more alive.

Therapy for creative minds is a path not just of healing, but of creative awakening. In the process of coming to know yourself more fully, psychotherapy can help you access the source of your creative potential and expand your capacity to produce work that is authentic, resonant, and impactful.

Meaning Making: From Artist to Therapist for Artists

Psychosynthesis:
A Journey of Self Discovery

Art, Therapy & the Alchemy of Meaning

I am a therapist with a past life as an artist. Prior to becoming a psychotherapist, I earned an MFA in a graduate program led by the artist Nayland Blake at the International Center of Photography in New York City that emphasized photography as conceptual art — a medium of inquiry as much as expression.

When I arrived in San Francisco to begin the work of my own personal healing, one of the most transformative realizations was this: my creative insight had the power to light the way for others to heal through the work of psychotherapy.

Since then, I have had the privilege of working with painters, photographers, designers, poets, filmmakers, conceptual artists and advertising creatives — supporting personal exploration, insight, and healing in service of a creative life that is vital and deeply meaningful.

I love nothing more than to co-creating the process of awareness with clients who use words and images to think deeply about who they are and what their work means — to themselves, their audience, and contemporary culture. Integrating the process of personal exploration with the creative process has the power to dramatically improve the quality of your work.

It is my honor to walk with you along the circuitous and magical path of the artist’s way, helping to unearth your gifts and breathe new meaning into your work. 

Offerings include therapy for artists, writers, and founders with creative therapy intensives, private workshops, and retreats on the horizon.

I offer therapy for artists in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and throughout California.

Awaken Insight & Creative Expression

Therapy for artists, writers & visionary minds.

Expand perception.
Invite transformation.
Realize your vision.