Guiding Principles of Psychotherapy that Inform My Practice
- Psychotherapy is always in the service of the client. It is client-centred and client-driven.
- Psychotherapy is first and foremost a relationship between myself and my clients. We gain our most meaningful and sometimes painful insights though our relationship with others.
- No client is ever solely who they appear to be and no client can be reduced to their stated or perceived problems alone.
- Each client is informed by their own personal history and personal unconscious. Each client also participates in and is subject to the timeless themes ( e.g. love, loss, change, growth) inherent in being human ( collective unconscious).
- The underlying motivating factor prompting most clients to seek therapy is a lack of soul in their lives. By lack of soul I mean a lack of meaning, depth, value, relatedness, beauty and a sense of the spiritual. Ultimately, the journey of psychotherapy is the journey of the spirit.
- A fundamental objective of psychotherapy is to allow the client to roam unencumbered through the maze of their being, to engage them in self-awareness and self-understanding and to come to realize what are their truths such that they can live fully in the world without the need for therapy.
- The Unconscious in humankind is a prime influencing factor on beliefs, values, morals, behaviour, feelings and ways of being and will be everpresent in my clients and myself in the work.
- Bringing the Unconscious to awareness is a fundamental process in therapy and in all relationships that seek a richer, deeper, more meaningful and spiritual way of being with oneself, with others and with the world. Bringing the Unconscious to Consciousness includes awakening the body and the spirit as well as the psyche.
- The ability of the client to contain new insights, information and glimpses of all aspects of their being is dependent on their capacity to tolerate and integrate such wisdom. Therapy includes both the exploration of what is as well as the building of what can be.
- Therapy is merely one of many ways to seek soul in ourselves and our world. Equally and, perhaps, more importantly is the client's life outside the office and how that client elicits and expresses soul in their world.
