The Voice of Psyche: Working with Archetypes and Unconscious Processes in Treatment

Central to our work as therapists is the hunger to understand the ways of Psyche and to cultivate a sense of wonder. To be fascinated, disturbed, and still hopeful when seeing how Psyche, can imbue a life with beauty and the greatest acts of kindness while also reminding us of the proliferation of suffering, and crimes against humanity.  Then, side by side with our own passion for Psyche and soul, there is the ongoing pain, disappointments, and yes, the harm we unknowingly do to those we love. Each speaks to the existence of autonomous, irruptive, archetypal forces within the Psyche.

It was the pioneers in psychology and especially Jungian Psychology who taught us to look behind the veil of consciousness to understand something of the workings of Psyche.  Especially today in a world of so much personal and global crisis, coupled with increasing restrictions on clinical practice such as time limited therapies, we need to follow in the footsteps of our clinical   grandparents and carry this sense of wonder and a highly developed clinical acumen into the consulting room. It is critical for us to deepen our understanding of Psyche’s motivations inherent in these patterns and relationships that bring  so much pain, while also understanding that while our client’s defense mechanisms are  innate and archetypal, ultimately they not only fail but pull us back into the lion’s den of  repeated and endless terrors. It is time to see how Psyche imbues the actual client-therapist relationship with a sense of grace by allowing the therapeutic dyad to serve as the canvas upon which to tell the story of the presence and meaning of archetypes in our clients’ lives.

Through a series of presentations and live supervision of participants’ cases, inclusive of  their clients' dreams, we will work closely with these personal and archetypal dynamics to see the presence of the numinous in this work, while understanding  why the sages and dreamers understood the spiritual nature of this work. Please join us on the Island of Giglio, located in the Tuscan Archipelago and one of Italy’s most beautiful islands for the Giglio Clinical Seminars.