A passionate, seasoned, warm, and creative film scholar and teacher, Terry's unique approach to film studies, Cinema & Psyche, synthesizes film art and history, depth psychology, cultural anthropology, mythic wisdom, poetics, and dreaming. Throughout over three decades of private practice, she served as mentor, depth psychological educator, dream consultant, archetypal spiritual director, multidisciplinary group leader, and professional supervisor.

Terry holds a Bachelor of Arts degree, which was awarded summa cum laude, with duel majors in both Psychology and Media Studies from Webster University in St. Louis. Her Master of Science degree from California State East Bay is in Clinical Counseling. She practiced as a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist from 1987 to 2000.

Her teaching experience has focused on cross-disciplinary film studies, the language of myth and symbol, group and individual dreamwork, cross-cultural wisdom, grief and loss, initiation, midlife passage, the way of the elder, depth mentoring, and group psychology. 

Terry has taught at College of Marin, Santa Rosa Junior College, Sonoma State Lifelong Learning Institute, Oakmont Lifelong Learning, The Dream Institute, The Esalen Institute, The Chaplaincy Institute, and Wisdom University. During her early career as a licensed psychotherapist, Terry developed and led many original groups and seminars related to personal growth, family therapy, addiction recovery, dreamwork, and soul centered inner work.


• Terry  Ebinger,  MS 

  My Movie Mentorship 

Mentored by the Movies


Serious fun for cinephiles!



Countless Friday nights, we made our midcentury pilgrimage to the "66" Park In Theatre —

a carload of pajama-clad kids tossed in the back of the Chevy station wagon for "Two Dollars A Car" night. 

West Side Story, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, and Breakfast at Tiffany's

cast their indelible spell, lulling me into many a Hollywood dreamscape of popcorn, romance, and sleep. I was hooked.


​Sunday afternoons, we packed into half dollar double features at our neighborhood staple, the Osage Theater.

Scores of wildlings loosely deposited at the curb while liberated parents escaped for the day.

Cinderella, Old Yeller, The Man with the X-Ray Eyes, The Magnificent Seven.  I treasured them all.


Vast wonderlands of old movies issued forth—like heavenly heralds—from our tiny black and white Westinghouse in 1959.
Shirley Temple, Fred Astaire, Cary Grant, Bette Davis, and Katherine Hepburn fueled my longings, visions, and dreams.

I was mesmerized. Comforted. Called. A golden thread to something true had claimed me.


Nightwatch Theater was sacred Saturday night TV with the older brother.

Spellbound by the classic horror canon, we immersed our nightmare-curious psyches in a

weekly holy trinity of masculine angst, existential philosophy, and expressionist art.

Amateur actors costumed as ghouls did black comedy shtick at every break. Our fervor was devotional.


Movies were my sanctified space, my imaginal refuge, my worldly mentor, my soul companion, my medicine.

Cinema is a constant point of reference. Now in my third act, I am astonished and grateful to have found my way here.

Teaching others to find beauty, magic, healing, and meaning in movies is where the fates have been coaxing me all along.


Terry