About Chelsea

Hi! I’m Chelsea Wagner, LICSW—a psychoanalyst, on faculty at the Oregon Psychoanalytic Institute (OPI) and Associate Clinical Faculty at the Chicago Center for Psychoanalysis (CCP). I completed the Certificate in Psychoanalysis at CCP, the two-year Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Program at the Minnesota Psychoanalytic Society & Institute (MPSI), and earned my MSW at the University of Minnesota.

How I work

I practice contemporary psychoanalysis—relational and Bionian.

• Relational means I pay close attention to what happens between us in sessions. The analytic relationship becomes the place where patterns show up and can finally change.

• Bionian means I help you think feelings that have been hard to think—using curiosity, reverie, and attention to dreams, slips, and symbols so experience can be digested rather than acted out.

I’m trauma-informed without centering crisis: I hold the aftereffects of early trauma and complex relationships—perfectionism, people-pleasing, codependency, shame, and the private loneliness beneath competence—while growing reflective capacity, choice, and freedom. I have extensive experience working with sexual abuse survivors.

Writing & the creative lens

I’m also a writer at work on a memoir, and I teach/think about writing as a form of analytic working-through.