For Clinical Psychologist Alara A. Ünlü, the practice of psychotherapy is a search to understand the opaque layers of the human psyche, the fragile self-structures concealed behind defense mechanisms, and the imprints of early object relations on present-day adult life. She laid the academic foundations of this search at the American Collegiate Institute (ACI) in İzmir, and then by completing the Psychology undergraduate program at Sabancı University with High Honors. Having been drawn to psychology during her high-school years, she joined the Abnormal Psychology program at the University of Texas at Austin (USA) to gain an international perspective and to study the foundations of clinical psychopathology.
For her specialization, she enrolled in the Clinical Psychology (thesis) Master's program at İstanbul Rumeli University. There she successfully defended her thesis, “An Examination of the Mediating Role of Self-Consciousness in the Relationship Between Personality Traits and Depression and Anxiety Scores,” earning the title of Clinical Psychologist with a high academic average of 3.92/4. Through this scientific research she demonstrated, on both a theoretical and a statistical level, the transformative effect of an individual's awareness of their own inner processes (self-consciousness) on the course of symptoms and on the structuring of the self.
Clinical Practice and a Look Into the Therapy Room
Actively continuing her clinical work since 2022, Alara A. Ünlü has accumulated over 400 hours of intensive psychotherapy experience. Throughout this practice she has conducted psychoanalytically oriented psychotherapy in both Turkish and English, on national and international platforms alike (Hypoworry, Moodist Psychiatry Hospital, Eşlik Psychology Counseling and Training Center, and others). The core focus of her clinical work is making sense of the individual's inner world, self-structures and affective dynamics within the framework of the Masterson Approach and Object Relations Theory.
In keeping with her belief in the continuity of professional and theoretical development, Alara A. Ünlü closely follows and actively takes part in the scientific activities of the IPA (International Psychoanalytic Association), ORI (Object Relations Institute), TR Together, the İstanbul Psychoanalysis Association (İPD) and Psike İstanbul. By closely following national and international work that runs parallel to her own clinical orientation and the psychoanalytic school she embraces, she keeps her professional vision continually up to date.
Alara A. Ünlü approaches the therapy room like those deep, unexplored spaces beneath the calm and transparent surface of water. Moving beyond the fluctuations of everyday life and the defense mechanisms at the surface, she aims to offer a sheltered, safe and transformative ground of experience where the individual can reconnect with their arrested or wounded “true self.” With her commitment to the transparency of therapeutic processes, to professional ethics and to the continuity of clinical supervision, she continues her supervision without interruption under the guidance of international schools such as the New York–based Object Relations Institute (ORI) and the Masterson Institute Türkiye. She regards sustaining these processes of oversight, supervision and training — until the very last day of her clinical practice — as a fundamental requirement of her professional stance.
