Dr. John Colby Martin | Licensed Psychotherapist in Naperville, Illinois

Thank you for visiting my web site. I hope you find it helpful and informative. If you are here, you likely have an interest in psychology and psychotherapy. I have arranged this site to help you find what you need.

To the right, you will find a description of my professional background – one that includes teaching, publishing and clinical supervision of graduate students and postdoctoral fellows. Few other psychologists or counselors can match this depth and breadth of experience. A final experience that I bring, that is unfortunately increasingly rare in this field, is my own intensive psychotherapy, lasting several years. Richard Chessick, a well-published psychotherapist (15 books and 250 professional articles), commented that having an unanalyzed therapist is like having a blind surgeon. It is always a good idea to ask your prospective psychologist or counselor to describe his or her own therapeutic experience – how long in treatment, frequency of sessions and the background of the treating therapist.

Above you will find a list of sections within this site. You are on the Home Page. The next section is Psychotherapy. This contains brief articles that I have written that will help you understand what psychotherapy is and, as importantly, is not. I will occasionally add something here in response to either information in the popular media, which you may have seen, or to a professional article that I find especially useful. Next is Speaking Engagements – pretty much self-explanatory. The next section is Areas of Professional Focus. There are five of them – Parenting, Depression and Anxiety, Grief, Divorce Recovery, and Psychology and Cardiac Health. Each has a brief description and then articles that I have written and included as I find information that I believe will be useful. The next section is What to Expect on Your First Visit. Having a general idea of what will happen can make it easier to get started and help you get more out of the first session. Finally, I have included a section called The Lighter Side of Psychology with two areas – one that pokes fun at psychology generally and a second, Venus and Mars, which provides a humorous look at the differences between men and women. I can’t say for certain that laughter is the best medicine – but it is very good for us. As I find cartoons that illustrate the irony, silliness or just plain irrationality of Homo sapiens, I’ll include these here. Enjoy! – Doctor’s Orders!

For more information, you may call me directly at:
(630) 355-9933

Dr. Colby Martin
Dr Martin holds a B.A. from Illinois Wesleyan University, a M.Div. from Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary and a Ph.D. from Northwestern University. He is an ordained minister of the United Methodist Church and spent four years serving United Methodist Churches in rural Wisconsin.

For the last twenty-five years the primary focus of Dr Martin’s work has been providing counseling and psychotherapy for adults, couples and older adolescents. He spent the first ten years of his career in psychology working at a Catholic counseling center, providing counseling and psychotherapy for Catholic Religious and diverse lay people. For the last fifteen years he has been in independent practice in Naperville. In addition to counseling, his work as a psychologist has included providing clinical supervision for graduate students and post-doctoral residents at Forest Hospital in DesPlaines and presentation of professional papers at national conferences.

He is co-author of Psychotherapy After Kohut: A Textbook of Self Psychology and an article based on his dissertation on grief. He is an adjunct faculty member at The Illinois School of Professional Psychology in Schaumburg, a part of Argosy University.

Dr Martin is married and is the father of two adult children and an adult stepson and has three grandchildren.