Depth Therapy in Brooklyn, NY

How I Came to Depth Psychology

I trained as a Gestalt therapist, and over the years I kept studying and widening the ways I practice. The thinker who became my north star is James Hillman. Hillman served as director of studies at the C.G. Jung Institute in Zurich before founding archetypal psychology, a branch of the depth tradition that grew out of Jungian psychology.

Hillman returned to the roots of the word psychotherapy. Psyche originally meant soul. Therapy comes from the Greek therapeia, the work of an attendant, someone who tends and serves. Read this way, psychotherapy is attending to soul, whether you think of that as the soul of a person or the soulful quality of a life. That is what gets centered once a week here.

This widens the purpose of therapy beyond symptom management. It brings curiosity to what we experience, without assuming that everything uncomfortable has to be eradicated in the interest of more efficient functioning. We still use what helps to reduce unnecessary suffering, and we stay interested in the deepest pursuits of what a life can be.

Archetypal Psychology and the Old Stories We Live

Archetypal psychology starts from something most people recognize once it is named: we tend to live through old stories again and again. Hillman turned to the gods and figures of myth to describe these patterns, read as images rather than beliefs - forces that live through us, and that we live inside.

Hillman also described the soul as plural, a psychology of many images and many voices. Working with the multitudes within a person was central to his thinking long before Internal Family Systems (IFS) arrived. I sometimes bring IFS techniques into the work, and I find them far richer when they rest on the traditions of depth psychology.

Shadow Work in Therapy

The shadow is often imagined as the dark side of a person. In depth psychology it is the unexplored side. The shadow of someone deeply charitable might be a streak of selfishness. The shadow of someone devoted only to career and acquisition might be an artist.

Shadow work is the slow reach toward wholeness: meeting and integrating the parts of ourselves we have rejected or never recognized. Jung is often quoted as saying he would rather be whole than good. That line sits close to the heart of this work.

Who Depth Counseling Is For

People come to depth work from many directions. Often it is one of these:

• A sense that relief from symptoms is only part of what you want
• Recurring dreams, images, or patterns that seem to be asking for something
• Midlife and other life transitions that raise questions of meaning
• An existential crisis, or a slower loss of direction
• Curiosity about Jungian psychology, archetypes, or the work of James Hillman
• Shorter-term therapy behind you, and a wish for longer-term, insight-oriented therapy
• A creative life whose inner material deserves real attention