hart caplan is a Registered Clinical Counsellor at There Counselling, his private practice in Vancouver, and the author of this site. His writing is concerned with what psychotherapy has been and what it might become — and with what it would mean to take that question seriously from the standpoint of a person sitting across from him in a room.
The work
His clients are primarily neurodivergent adults — others, like himself, who have been given diagnoses of ADHD, autism, and the various adjacent conditions through which contemporary psychiatry parses the difference between a typical and an atypical mind. Much of the writing on this site is concerned with the inadequacy of that vocabulary — including the strikethrough convention used across the essays for adhd, for which see "Kill the Meaning, Keep the Name".
hart identifies less with any technical modality than with the tradition of existential psychotherapy, broadly construed. His writing develops a philosophical critique of contemporary practice, arguing that the dominant therapeutic traditions have been led astray on different fronts: the psychodynamic and behaviourist by the promise of scientific legitimacy, producing practices anchored in the traumatic past or the stimulus-response present; and the humanist by the fiction of the bounded individual. Against the latter, his work develops a more relational and distributed account of personhood, drawing on the anthropological dividual and the biological holobiont.
Across both critiques, what gets lost is the structure of futurity — the dimension that distinguishes a lived life from a documented one, and the dimension on which his clinical practice is built. The essays on this site work out one or another facet of that argument; the two book manuscripts work it out at length.
The practice
There Counselling operates from Vancouver, in-person and online. hart works primarily with adults and welcomes neurodivergent clients in particular. He is also available for clinical supervision. Practical details — fees, scheduling, location — live on the Psychology Today profile; a fuller account of the therapeutic orientation lives across the essays.
Education and credentials
Honours B.A., McGill University. B.Ed., University of New Brunswick. M.A. in History, University of New Brunswick. Master of Counselling, City University. Registered Clinical Counsellor (#17907), British Columbia Association of Clinical Counsellors.
The books
On Inhibition: Notes from Undisciplined Practice is a long-form philosophical critique of the dominant psychotherapeutic traditions and a constructive proposal — drawing on Heidegger, Latour, Kierkegaard, Bateson, and others — for a practice oriented toward futurity. A second book, in dialogue form, addresses the medical capture of anxiety since the publication of the DSM-III in 1980. Both manuscripts are with readers. Publication news will appear here when there is some.
Stay in touch
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For press, supervision, or other inquiries: use the form below, or write to [email protected].
For clinical inquiries: the Psychology Today profile is the easiest route.
