The Center
The Gerdenio Manuel Center for Psychotherapy was founded on a simple conviction: that lasting change comes not from technique alone, but from a genuine human relationship in which a person can be fully known.
Our Orientation
We are a depth-oriented practice. That means we are interested not only in what troubles you, but in what it is trying to tell you — the history, the relationships, and the unspoken feelings that give a symptom its shape. Rather than working only to remove distress, we follow it inward, toward the experience at its core, where real and durable change becomes possible.
Our work is grounded in psychodynamic and relational traditions, in attachment theory, and in contemporary research on the moment-to-moment process by which change actually occurs between two people. We hold that the most powerful therapeutic events are often small and relational — the implicit, felt sense of being understood — and we attend closely to them. Where structured, evidence-based methods for communication, regulation, and repair are useful, we bring them in service of that deeper work.
We also believe that psychology and meaning are inseparable. Questions of identity, culture, faith, suffering, and purpose are not outside the consulting room — they are frequently the heart of the matter. We meet each person with curiosity and without judgment, attentive to the whole of who they are.
The Name
The Center is named after our founder and senior mentor. The name was chosen as a tribute to his work.
Dr. Gerdenio "Sonny" Manuel, S.J. — psychologist, teacher, and Jesuit priest — has spent a lifetime accompanying others through suffering toward healing, and forming the clinicians who learn from him. To carry his name is to commit ourselves to the standard of care he embodies: clinically excellent, deeply human, and grounded in compassionate wisdom.
A Little History
Born in New York and raised between Manila and San Francisco, Gerdenio Manuel, S.J., began his career as a teacher and mentor to young people before earning his doctorate in clinical psychology from Duke University and completing his clinical training as an advanced fellow at Cambridge City Hospital, Harvard Medical School. He has practiced as a licensed psychologist in California since 1985.
Over the decades since, his work has spanned the consulting room, the classroom, and the wider community — from supervising psychotherapy groups for men in addiction and recovery to teaching, writing, and mentoring generations of clinicians. The Center continues that lineage: a practice where rigorous training and genuine care are understood to be one and the same.
Formation and Leadership
Alongside four decades of clinical practice, Dr. Manuel has carried institutional responsibility: leading schools and departments, overseeing the formation of Jesuits from entrance through ordination, and directing a religious province’s response to those harmed by its own members. Much of that work was formation — judging what preparation a person needs before others are entrusted to their care.
At Santa Clara University he was the first Dean of the School of Education, Counseling Psychology, and Pastoral Ministries, Vice Provost for University Programs and Multicultural Education, and Rector of the Jesuit community. At the University of San Francisco he chaired the Department of Psychology and directed the Saint Ignatius Institute, and is now Professor Emeritus. Across those thirty-five years he taught abnormal, clinical, and positive psychology to undergraduate and doctoral students.
As Director of Vocations and later Provincial Assistant for Formation, he was religious superior to the Jesuits in training — responsible for their studies, their supervision, and their readiness to move from one stage of formation to the next, and ultimately toward ordination. He went on to serve as Prefect of Studies and as Provincial Assistant for Higher Education, and taught clinical foundations in pastoral counseling at the Jesuit School of Theology in Berkeley, where he had earned his own M.Div.
He chaired the province review board on sexual misconduct and, as Province Safety Delegate for the Jesuits of USA West, oversaw the protocol governing allegations and investigations along with the outreach and care offered to those who had been harmed. He has also advised the Diocese of San Jose on mental health interventions for clergy.
He has served as a trustee of Santa Clara University, Fordham University, the University of San Francisco, and Loyola Marymount University, sitting on the executive committees of the first three, and on the board of the Ignatian Solidarity Network. He was an American Council on Education Fellow in higher education leadership.
That history shapes how the Center trains. Supervision here is treated as formation rather than instruction — slow, relational, and concerned with the whole clinician, not only the case at hand.
Voices
Reflections from clients, colleagues, and clinicians who have worked with our founder, Dr. Gerdenio “Sonny” Manuel, S.J. — on the care, the accompaniment, and the depth of the work he has practiced for forty years.
Clients and supervisees are identified only by their role; colleagues speak on the record.
When my husband was dying, Sonny offered steady, sturdy accompaniment. Working with him, we found words to speak the unspeakable — those inchoate feelings of loss, regret, even anger, which once spoken suddenly weighed less. Walking with him, we found the courage to enter fully the experience of dying, and to find in the midst of it great light, even hope. Though it ended in death, this was a journey of great healing. Sonny offers counseling grounded in reality and practiced with compassionate wisdom.
Working with Sonny has yielded in me perhaps the most significant and lasting personal growth of any therapeutic relationship I have engaged in. His approach is one of compassion and understanding, all while being ultimately aimed at enhancing personal reflection and growth. He has especially contributed to my own growth as a gay man who has at times struggled to find self-compassion and self-understanding.
Sonny has astonishing range: in the four years I’ve seen him for pastoral counseling he’s played the role of career coach, financial advisor, psychotherapist, and spiritual mentor. Whatever the issue, he gets to the heart of the matter and offers guidance tuned to the situation. The results have been remarkable. My marriage, career, relationship to money, self-understanding — I have grown in all these areas since I began working with Sonny. I am, without doubt, a better version of myself thanks to him.
To date, the year I spent in supervision with Sonny was the best I have received, both personally and professionally. Sonny took the time to truly see and understand me as a human being. The connection and trust cultivated in our relationship made it possible for me to work through my own areas of personal growth. The way Sonny engaged with me while I struggled with experiences of loss, hopelessness, and limited affective range made me a more genuine person and a more alive human being.
I had the honor of both co-leading a psychotherapy group with Fr. Manuel and being supervised by him. In all my years of training, never did I grow more as a psychotherapist than I did from my time with him — not to mention the evolution of my own psychological processes just from being in his presence. Fr. Manuel has an amazing ability to quickly get to the root of the problem. He isn’t the kind of therapist to merely work on temporarily removing symptoms but rather, he follows the symptom to the core and affords his client space for a corrective experience, so that the root simply no longer produces the symptom. Fr. Manuel’s therapeutic personality, coupled with his elite training, is the recipe for the kind of therapist who is unmatched.
Dr. Manuel is a therapist’s therapist. He is clearly the person I would send my dearest friends and closest relatives to if they needed psychotherapy — and I’ve been in practice myself for over thirty years. He perfectly blends excellent clinical skills based in psychology, spirituality, and his rich personal experience to offer clients the very best psychotherapy experience they can hope to ever receive.
Explore our services, or reach out to begin a conversation about whether our practice is right for you.