Scott LaForce

“Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.” -Carl Jung

A life of journeying has brought me here, with an intense focus on the creative drive. Having spent a decade pursuing my passion as an artist, I explored many rabbit holes, not least significant of them guiding me to this current manifestation as an LGBTQ+-Affirming Relational Therapist. My current credential is marriage and family therapist associate (or MFT-A).

I have endeavored through the grueling process of my own personal shadow work throughout my life, dancing with the light, the dark, and the spectrum of color. Now I’d like to help you along your journey.

As a proud member of the LGBTQ+ community, I am dedicated to helping my peers and allies rise from the destructive forces of stigma and oppression. Using strengths-based and person-centered foundations, I believe that you are inherently beautiful and powerful at your core. I use various collaborative methods within intersubjective (creative) frameworks from a postmodern perspective. I believe that you are the expert of your own life, that I serve as merely a vehicle for you to utilize in your own exploration. I am a Feminist and a Jungian-influenced therapist who honors the multidimensional ‘beyond’ and in-between the divine feminine and masculine. The theories that will break the binary are being written, on their way to being established, but we have a long way to go. I work with sensitivity to what we don’t know collectively, but what you probably do know from your own personal experience. I believe in synchronicity and the power of narratives and symbols. I am also holistic and work integrally using a four-dimensional (and beyond!), bio-psycho-social-spiritual approach. I have deep spiritual connections to animals and nature.

I hold two masters’ degrees: one in fine arts, the other in applied psychology from Antioch University in Los Angeles. Major course work included specialization focus on LGBTQ+ affirmative history, sexuality, relationships (including consensual nonmonogamy), and psychology; with intentional focus on spiritual depth, trauma, human development, addictions, as well as group and community dynamics. I work to help my clients heal their relational wounds, whether internal to self, amongst your loved ones and community, or to the world at large. My MFA research at Rochester Institute of Technology delved deeply into the structures and hierarchies of power on personal, interpersonal, community, and global scales. I am particularly driven by the works of Michel Foucault and Michael Warner, whose philosophical journeying established precedents for understanding how we relate to one another. Born and raised in Rochester, NY, a historical hot bed for civil rights, the home of Frederick Douglass and Susan B. Anthony, I am grateful and excited to merge my home-grown social justice orientation with that of the Portland, Oregon region. I also see clients in the Eugene/Springfield area.

The time for change is here. It starts with all of us!