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 — 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 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.
Explore our services, or reach out to begin a conversation about whether our practice is right for you.