About Me

I am a licensed clinical psychologist (PSY 36410) providing psychodynamic and Jungian psychotherapy, and integrating EMDR when clinically indicated. My work is grounded in the understanding that many of the struggles we encounter—whether in relationships, work, identity, or emotional well-being—are shaped by patterns and experiences operating outside conscious awareness.

I work with individuals from diverse backgrounds, including professionals in corporate, academic, creative, and helping professions. My clinical experience includes working with children, adolescents, adults, couples, families, college students, court-mandated clients, victims of crime, and individuals navigating life transitions, trauma, anxiety, depression, and relationship difficulties. I also provide clinical supervision and support the professional development of psychotherapists in training.

While my work is grounded in psychodynamic and Jungian psychotherapy, it is also informed by relational psychoanalysis and a range of contemporary approaches, including EMDR, mindfulness-based practices, cognitive behavioral interventions, somatic perspectives, ego-state and parts-oriented work, and expressive modalities. My approach is tailored to the needs of each individual rather than relying on a single therapeutic method.

I received my PhD in Clinical Psychology with an emphasis in Depth Psychology from Pacifica Graduate Institute. My work is informed by psychoanalytic and Jungian traditions—two lineages that share the recognition that much of psychological life unfolds outside conscious awareness while illuminating different dimensions of the psyche and human experience.

My psychodynamic orientation was further enriched by post-Freudian and relational psychoanalysis during two years of psychoanalytic psychotherapy training at The Wright Institute Los Angeles, where I completed my pre-doctoral internship and postdoctoral fellowship working with adults and couples. This training continues to inform my psychodynamic and depth-oriented clinical approach.

Before entering psychology, I spent most of my adult life in the business world. I operated a cottage resort at Lake Tahoe for nine years. One of the cottages at times served through a domestic violence service agency as a temporary safe residence for women, offering an early, lived encounter with emotional suffering, vulnerability, and the complex emotional entanglements that can draw people repeatedly back into the cycle of violence despite a desire for safety and change.

From this period, I transitioned into real estate development and repairing fixer-upper houses. That work—attending to damaged structures with patience, strengthening what had been destabilized, and reorganizing what no longer supported the whole—became an embodied metaphor for tending the House of the Psyche. This sensibility continues to shape how I approach clinical work: attending to what supports, what has been compromised, and what can be restored.

Alongside my work in construction, I remained engaged in music and creative production, while continuing a lifelong exploration of Eastern, Western, and Indigenous philosophical and spiritual traditions. Over time, these experiences found resonance within depth-oriented and psychodynamic approaches to psychology, which recognize the symbolic, embodied, cultural, and unconscious dimensions of human experience. Through formal study and mentorship, I developed an integrative understanding of the layered relationship between psyche and soma. My training in holistic modalities such as chakra work, voice work, and Qigong supports this perspective, particularly in attending to how psychological distress may be communicated through the body.

Presenting voice work at the University of Oxford and other professional societies brought me into dialogue with elders and teachers from diverse traditions. What struck me was a way of knowing that is embodied, intuitive, and relational—one not organized around the Cartesian split between mind and body that underlies much of modern clinical thinking. These encounters continue to inform how I listen and how I attune to the depth and complexity of my clients’ experience.

Having lived in California for over four decades since leaving Taiwan, I have inhabited multiple cultural worlds—negotiating language, belonging, and identity across diverse environments. I am a contributing author to Transdisciplinary Migrations: Science, the Sacred, and the Arts (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2024), where I explore ancestral calling, intergenerational trauma, Indigenous therapeutics, and what I term the Transcultural Unconscious—the multilayered psychic field constituted by intersecting and sometimes conflicting ancestral, cultural, and historical inheritances, wounds, and unfinished transmissions that continue to live within and express through the psyche.

Therapeutic Orientation & Process

My work is grounded in psychodynamic and Jungian traditions, with EMDR woven in when appropriate to support emotional processing and psychosomatic integration.

In practice, we attend both to present experience and to deeper patterns shaping it—what has been inherited, defended against, dissociated, or left unspoken. The process is collaborative and responsive, guided by what is emerging in your inner life at a given time.

Change often unfolds as a shift in your relationship to experience, allowing for new ways of responding where there were once automatic defenses, and a greater capacity to hold complexity, ambiguity, and emotional depth. Over time, what once felt isolating may begin to reconnect with broader layers of meaning—symbolic, relational, and cultural.

Learn more about this work on the My Approach page.

Working Together

I provide online psychotherapy through a HIPAA-compliant Zoom platform in both English and Mandarin. 

I offer LGBTQ+ and neurodivergent-affirming care, supporting individuals in navigating their inner worlds. 

I specialize in working with high-functioning individuals navigating the intersection of outer success and inner psychological challenges and growth. I work with individuals from diverse personal, professional, and cultural backgrounds. I also provide personal psychotherapy for psychotherapists, supporting deeper self-reflection and psychological insight into the personal unconscious and the patterns that shape both personal and professional life. In addition, I work with PsyD students at a graduate school in California in a clinical supervisory role.

For international individuals, I may offer depth-oriented consultation focused on inner exploration and personal growth rather than psychotherapy. We can determine together whether this format is appropriate during the initial consultation.

If you would like to explore whether depth-oriented work may be helpful for you, the first step is a free 15-minute Zoom consultation. To schedule, please email me at akasa@drakasatseng.com with your availability. 

Degrees & Credentials For

• PhD in Clinical Psychology with an emphasis in Depth Psychology — Pacifica Graduate Institute

• MA in Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness — California Institute of Integral Studies

• 2-year Certificate Program in Advanced Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy — Wright Institute Los Angeles

• Certificate of Completion — EMDR Basic Training by EMDR Professional Training (EMDRIA-approved program)

• Certificate of Completion — Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy