Philosophy

In my psychotherapy practice I work with people from all types of backgrounds and walks of life, and I believe in fostering an inclusive and welcoming environment. 

Psychotherapy is a process of commitment to taking responsibility for our present moment existence; our choices, emotional reactivity, our chosen mental state, and the ongoing opportunity to learn the urgent lessons of “earth school”. As Carl Jung put it: “You are not what has happened to you, you are what you choose to become.”

The first step in psychotherapy is to gain an understanding of the circumstances and conditions that have influenced our distortions and blockages. Many of us have been traumatized by overwhelming experiences of shame and powerlessness. However, we may spend too much of our precious time rehearsing the narrative of our woundedness and forget that the past does not define our true identity. If we are willing to consider that change is possible, then we must be open to discarding false self definitions that limit our potential to grow into greater and greater truth. We must be willing to explore the unconscious shadow emotions of fear, shame, grief and soul-loss so that we can begin to understand (and eventually transform) the hiddenness of secret feelings and how they intrude upon our everyday perceptions of present experience and create more and more pain and suffering. 

The most profound contribution of Jungian psychology is the insight that a significant aspect of our thoughts, feelings and behavior are determined by unconscious forces that are outside of our awareness and can lead us into destructive and irrational actions. We are inclined to sabotage our own growth and engage in self-destructive addictions. Humanity itself is on a death spiral with a militant desire for power and warfare and hatred of fellow humans while the planet smolders. We are unaware of how primal fears of our own vulnerability and powerlessness as mortal humans contribute to inflationary abuses of power and control.

My background in philosophy and spirituality informs my psycho-spiritual approach to psychotherapy. However, for those patients who need practical and solution oriented approaches to job, family, relational and health issues, the use of cognitive behavioral psychotherapy is entirely appropriate. In these situations, the patient may be more interested in short-term problem resolution and adjustment to conflicted situations rather than inner work and transformation - and this goal is entirely practical. In solution-oriented psychotherapy, one might say that we are addressing the personality. 

On the other hand, more and more individuals are seeking to go beyond personality and adaptation and their goal is to address the deeper issues of the soul. For those who are on a path of self understanding and spiritual inquiry, we must begin with the wisdom and awareness that early conditioning and patterns of defensive overthinking, over-intellectualization and avoidance of the heart of vulnerability play a dominant role in creating a sense of soul-loss. It’s as if we have been hypnotized to remain loyal to the strategic mind’s desire for control and mastery and we have abandoned the heart’s inner gifts of intuition and mystery. The default setting of Western culture is to be at the mercy of a world of external demands, expectations for conformity, and a pervasive pattern of looking to the outside world for happiness and dream satisfaction. All spiritual systems teach that the more energy you invest in seeking happiness in the activities and illusions of the external world, the farther and farther true happiness moves away. 

Depth psychology integrates free association, dreamwork, guided imagery and creative imagination. Aspects of our being that have been dissociated, neglected, and denied are given safe sanctuary for expression and re-integration. Thus, the overall vision of depth psychology is to embrace the core energies of our True Nature.