About

My name is Maurice Nicoleau, and I’m a licensed clinical social worker and psychotherapist. I earned my Master’s in Social Work from New York University’s Silver School and currently I work as the Chief of Social Services in Jamaica Hospital Department of Psychiatry, as well as the Interim Director of Risk Management. I am currently an advanced psychoanalytic candidate at Adelphi University. This page will tell you more about my background, my goals as a psychotherapist, and the teachings that guide my practice. 

As a psychotherapist with years of experience in both private and clinical settings, I bring a unique set of skills to my work. In my one-on-one psychotherapy practice, I believe achieving good mental health means working toward an inner authenticity. As a therapist, my work helps you know, feel, and have true possession of your full, authentic self so you can adapt to whatever life throws at you. This may sound easy, but simple and easy are not always the same. 

I work with clients to look for patterns and narratives, for ways that the past influences their present. Anyone can use a stethoscope to hear a heartbeat; it takes careful training to hear more, to pick up on the rhythms and sounds that may indicate deeper problems. In a similar way, my instrument is attuned to the narratives that others impose upon us and that we impose upon ourselves. Recognizing these narratives is the first step toward finding ways to manage them, and eventually to become free of them. 

In their sessions, I guide clients to look at how these unconscious influences affect their present life. Working psychodynamically, my work asks how the unconscious in our history influences our present. I then use that information to address and liberate people from their pasts, so they can live comfortably and truly in the present and have the life they want in the future. Together, we develop a language that acknowledges the individual client, their experience, and their goals. In this way, clients are able to change their patterns by developing a healthier mindset. This mindset gives them greater agency to be able to do what they want to do in life. 

For me, this is true ‘health’: knowing your authentic self so you feel liberated to move forward in life. My hope is that clients will leave our sessions seeing themselves more clearly, understanding themselves more authentically, and connecting with their healthiest selves. It’s always up to the client what their goals are; from my experience, people enter therapy with goals and then discover they want to achieve more. My own desire is to help the person become their own therapist, with a long-term goal of clients learning to free themselves of the narratives that hold them back from living their fullest lives.