Psychotherapy is a space in which life can be examined with a kind of attention that rarely finds room in everyday experience. Here we bring our difficulties in relationships, our losses and anxieties, choices that seem impossible, and conflicts that keep returning. But we also bring questions about the meaning of existence, unease we cannot quite name, dreams that remain vivid in memory, and the desire to understand more deeply who we are.
Jungian psychotherapy, grounded in the Analytical Psychology of Carl Gustav Jung, begins with a particularly rich understanding of human nature: that our psychological life extends beyond the limits of consciousness. We do not always know the reasons for our feelings, nor do we necessarily recognize the forces that shape our choices and the ways we relate to the world. Our history continues to live within us in many forms, some familiar, others still unknown.
Jung found in dreams, symbols, emotions, and the spontaneous expressions of imagination valuable ways of exploring this inner reality. His psychology opened a field of understanding in which human experience could be considered in its complexity, including the contradictions within the personality, the conflicts between consciousness and the unconscious, and the possibilities for development that accompany us throughout life.
Within the therapeutic relationship, these ideas take on a profoundly human dimension. Each person brings a history unlike anyone else’s, and it is from that history that the work unfolds. A memory, an emotion, a recurring difficulty, or an image emerging from a dream may offer a way into psychological exploration. The meaning of these experiences must be discovered through the therapeutic encounter, with attention to the particular life of the person experiencing them.
Much of who we are has taken shape through experiences we can no longer remember clearly. We learned to love, to fear, to protect ourselves, and to seek recognition within the relationships that shaped our early lives. Time changes these experiences and sometimes blurs their outlines, but it does not necessarily undo the emotional patterns formed within them.
Jung devoted his earliest research to complexes: constellations of memories, images, and emotions that form around psychologically significant experiences. His investigations revealed that certain contents of the psyche can develop a degree of autonomy, influencing the way we think, feel, and react, even when our conscious intentions lead us in another direction.
Someone’s disapproval may carry the weight of rejection; an absence may awaken the anguish of abandonment; the possibility of disappointing another person may turn a simple decision into a source of suffering. Something happening in the present touches an earlier experience, and for a time it becomes difficult to distinguish what belongs to one from what belongs to the other.
Consider someone who learned, very early in life, to earn love and recognition by becoming indispensable. Anticipating other people’s needs, avoiding conflict, and taking on responsibilities may have been ways of preserving important relationships. Years later, this disposition may emerge in relationships marked by excessive devotion and difficulty establishing boundaries. Even when the suffering becomes apparent, giving up this way of relating may provoke profound anxiety, as though the possibility of being loved depended on continuing to fulfil that role.
What once served as a form of adaptation may continue to operate long after the original circumstances have changed. Some attitudes become so deeply woven into our way of being that we no longer recognize them as possibilities among others.
Analytical Psychology is also concerned with aspects of the personality that remain outside our conscious identity. Jung used the term shadow to describe those qualities we do not know or find difficult to acknowledge as our own, often because they contradict the image we have cultivated of ourselves.
Encountering the shadow may reveal feelings we would rather ignore: resentment in relationships sustained by generosity, envy where we would prefer to find admiration, emotional dependence beneath an appearance of independence. But qualities that have never found the conditions in which to develop may also remain unknown: the assertiveness of someone raised always to agree, the spontaneity of someone who had to grow up too soon, or creative capacities set aside in favour of demands considered more important.
Such discoveries can unsettle long-held convictions. Recognizing contradictory tendencies, understanding their origins, and taking responsibility for the ways they influence our choices requires a willingness to reconsider what we believed we knew so well about ourselves.
Therapeutic work accompanies this process of exploration and psychological elaboration. Understanding a conflict intellectually can be important, although insight alone does not always change attitudes that have developed over many years. Transformation also involves recognizing how these patterns appear in our present relationships and what happens within us when we try to respond differently.
For someone accustomed to securing affection through devotion to others, recognizing their difficulty saying no may be only the beginning. They may also need to explore the fear that accompanies setting a boundary, the meaning they attach to another person’s possible disappointment, and the experiences that made it so difficult to acknowledge their own needs.
It is in the ongoing course of life, in the concrete situations where old feelings reappear, that these understandings can gradually be worked through.
Among Jung’s most original contributions is his understanding of dreams as spontaneous expressions of unconscious activity.
During sleep, our experience takes on unexpected forms. We return to places that no longer exist, encounter unfamiliar people, and travel through improbable landscapes. Some images vanish as soon as we awaken; others remain in memory with a disconcerting clarity, accompanied by feelings we cannot explain.
Jung considered that dreams might reveal aspects of our psychological situation that consciousness has not yet sufficiently recognized. In his view, dream activity bears meaningful relationships to the dreamer’s conscious attitudes and conflicts, sometimes presenting perspectives unavailable within their usual understanding of life.
Approaching these images, however, requires care.
A house appearing in a dream may evoke childhood memories, feelings of safety or loneliness, or experiences we do not yet know how to name. Understanding it depends on the particular house, what happens in the dream, and the associations of the person who dreamed it.
A quiet house filled with morning light does not belong to the same imaginative experience as a house in which every door has been locked.
We still need to become familiar with its atmosphere, the feelings involved, and the relationship the dreamer has with that place. Perhaps a memory will arise immediately. At other times, it may be necessary to return to the image repeatedly, noticing details previously overlooked, until a meaningful connection begins to emerge.
For Jung, a symbol expresses something that cannot yet be fully understood through the concepts available to us. Its psychological significance lies in its capacity to bring together meanings and experiences that extend beyond conscious knowledge.
James Hillman’s Archetypal Psychology deepened the exploration of imagination and the life of images. Hillman questioned the tendency to translate images immediately into psychological meanings, drawing attention instead to their particular qualities, their internal relationships, and the atmosphere surrounding them.
Imagine a tree appearing in a dream. It may be a dry tree, weathered by the wind, with exposed roots and a single green leaf. Its presence has a character all its own. To replace it immediately with an abstract idea of growth or vitality would erase precisely what distinguishes it from every other tree.
Hillman’s thought invites us to stay with the image, attending to the ways its elements relate to one another and to the associations they evoke. Some imaginative experiences acquire greater depth when we give them enough attention for their particular qualities to become apparent.
This sensitivity also brings Depth Psychology into conversation with literature, art, mythology, and traditional tales.
Through stories, different cultures have given form to experiences of love and loss, the dangers of separation, the difficulties of growing into adulthood, desire, and fear. Certain stories continue to resonate with people far removed from the times and circumstances in which they were first conceived.
A character may disturb us without our knowing why. An apparently minor event remains in memory. A landscape described centuries ago awakens an unexpected sense of familiarity.
In Depth Psychology, bringing personal images into relationship with motifs found in cultural traditions offers a possibility for symbolic amplification. Such correspondences must be explored with discernment, respecting both the historical contexts of the stories and the particular experience of the person encountering them.
Working with dreams and images can enrich psychological exploration when it finds a meaningful place within the therapeutic process. Their significance develops through the dreamer’s associations and experience, without the need to assign a predetermined meaning to every figure.
Life asks us to make successive adaptations. We learn to occupy particular places within our families, establish relationships, build professional identities, and respond to the expectations of the world. Gradually, certain characteristics come to define how we recognize ourselves and how others recognize us.
This identity sustains commitments, choices, and relationships, giving continuity to our experience of being alive. Yet the personality does not develop uniformly. Some dispositions find favourable conditions in which to mature, while others remain almost unknown, like possibilities that life has not yet allowed us to explore.
At certain moments, what once seemed sufficient begins to lose its meaning. A professional choice no longer corresponds to our present interests. A relationship reveals conflicts that have remained unexpressed for years. Values accepted almost without question begin to call for deeper reflection.
This unease can be particularly disconcerting when everything we have built appears to remain in place.
Someone may have devoted much of their life to meeting the expectations placed upon them. They chose a respected profession, assumed responsibilities, and earned recognition. They may have found genuine satisfaction along the way. Yet a moment arrives when continuing that life no longer feels inwardly meaningful in quite the same way.
How many of our choices arose from our own desires? Which possibilities were left behind? Which commitments still hold meaning, and which remain in place simply because it is difficult to imagine another way of living?
Jung explored questions of this nature through the process he called individuation, a concept describing the development of a broader and more differentiated relationship between consciousness and the totality of psychic life.
Individuation involves recognizing unconscious aspects of the personality, reconsidering certain identifications, and developing possibilities that have previously been neglected. It unfolds within the particular circumstances of each life, with its responsibilities, relationships, and limitations.
Letting go of an old identification rarely brings relief alone. What restricts us may also have provided safety, recognition, and a sense of belonging. A person who has always found their worth in caring for others may experience guilt as they begin to recognize their own needs. Someone whose identity has been built around professional excellence may feel profoundly disoriented upon realizing that they wish to devote their life to other experiences.
Psychological maturation involves working through these contradictions. Some choices may be transformed; others may need to be embraced with greater awareness. Certain conflicts find new possibilities for resolution, while others continue to accompany us, acquiring different meanings over time.
In Jung’s understanding, individuation also concerns the relationship between the ego, the centre of consciousness, and the Self, the principle of psychic wholeness. This formulation seeks to understand psychological development beyond an exclusive identification with the conscious image we hold of ourselves.
The ways we participate in relationships may change as we become more aware of the expectations we have internalized and the needs we were previously unable to distinguish. Some relationships open to new possibilities for dialogue; others reveal difficulties that had remained concealed beneath familiar patterns of adaptation.
Questions related to individuation may reappear at different periods of life. A conviction that once seemed definitive requires reconsideration. A little-developed capacity finds an opportunity for expression. Experiences that previously seemed contradictory begin to be understood as parts of the same life story.
Sometimes what we need to examine lies precisely in what we have learned to consider natural: an old obligation, a desire persistently postponed, a way of loving that has never been questioned.
Psychotherapy can accompany these discoveries, providing conditions in which they may be understood and worked through within the concrete possibilities of each person’s life.
The therapeutic relationship occupies a fundamental place in Analytical Psychology. Jung understood psychotherapy as a dialectical process in which the encounter between therapist and patient actively participates in the work of psychological understanding and elaboration.
Each person who seeks therapy arrives with their own questions. Some can be expressed clearly from the very first conversation. Others begin to take shape over the course of the sessions, as experiences that once seemed disconnected are considered in relation to one another.
The work unfolds through listening and dialogue. A recent event may lead to an old memory; a difficulty in one relationship may reveal an attitude that also appears in other circumstances. At times, the exploration turns toward a dream or a persistent image. At others, it centres on a difficult decision, a family conflict, or suffering that has not yet found words.
The therapist participates in this process through their training, their capacity to listen, and their clinical interventions. Understanding develops through attention to what the person brings, their associations, and the ways they experience the questions being explored. An interpretation may open new perspectives, but its relevance must be examined within the therapeutic relationship itself.
Analytical Psychology offers ways of investigating unconscious processes, complexes, dreams, and the contradictions of the personality. These approaches are used according to the needs of each therapeutic process. Attention to symbolic experience is integrated with an understanding of concrete life circumstances and a clinical assessment of psychological suffering, including, when necessary, specific forms of care or interdisciplinary support.
Some people begin psychotherapy hoping to understand why certain relationships repeatedly become painful. Others are living through loss, significant changes, emotional conflicts, or periods in which life itself seems to have lost some of its meaning. Each situation presents different needs, which help guide the work as the sessions unfold.
Over time, someone may begin to notice what happens within them before reacting in a familiar way. A person who has always avoided conflict may recognize the fear that prevents them from expressing disagreement. Someone accustomed to ignoring signs of exhaustion may learn to recognize their limits before their suffering intensifies. An old memory, revisited under different emotional circumstances, may reveal aspects that could not previously be considered.
What happens during a session may also acquire meaning later. An observation returns to mind during a conversation; a feeling recognized in therapy reappears in an everyday decision; a familiar situation begins to be perceived differently.
Clinical work does not follow a uniform script. Psychotherapy develops in accordance with the history, needs, and aims of the person seeking it, through an ongoing process of psychological exploration and elaboration.
It is in this meeting between what gradually becomes understandable and the life that continues to unfold that new ways of feeling, choosing, and relating to others may take shape.
JUNG, Carl Gustav. Two Essays on Analytical Psychology. Collected Works, vol. 7.
JUNG, Carl Gustav. “On the Nature of the Psyche.” In The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. Collected Works, vol. 8.
JUNG, Carl Gustav. The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious. Collected Works, vol. 9, part 1.
JUNG, Carl Gustav. The Practice of Psychotherapy. Collected Works, vol. 16.
HILLMAN, James. Re-Visioning Psychology. New York: Harper & Row, 1975.
HILLMAN, James. “An Inquiry into Image.” Spring: An Annual of Archetypal Psychology and Jungian Thought, 1977, pp. 62–88.
My clinical practice is grounded in Carl Gustav Jung’s Analytical Psychology and Archetypal Psychology, in dialogue with my studies and experiences in the fields of art, literature, philosophy, and mythology.
I offer individual online psychotherapy for adults in Portuguese and English. My work encompasses emotional suffering, relationships, loss, conflict, life transitions, and the desire for deeper self-understanding.
An initial conversation offers an opportunity to share what brings you to therapy, ask questions, and become familiar with my approach.
Get in touch to arrange an initial conversation.
Chantal Cidonio — Psychologist Registered in Brazil | CRP 06/143269