Is it actually such an easy thing to know yourself?
Was it some simpleton who inscribed those words on the temple wall at Delphi?
Or is it difficult, and not for everybody?
—Socrates

My Approach to Psychotherapy

Depth therapy starts from two basic convictions: that self-knowledge is essential for living an authentic human life, and that self-knowledge does not come easily.

First, depth therapy holds that self-knowledge is essential for living a truly human life. Odd as it is, we have a tendency to turn against, inhibit, and mislead ourselves. These forms of inner conflict put me at odds with myself, and as a result my energies are spent fighting, hiding from, and lying to myself. Self-honesty, on the other hand, is the path to knowing myself and developing as a mature, integrated, and authentic human being. 

Second, depth therapy recognizes that we often resist self-knowledge, so that it does not come easily. But despite our resistance, truth seems to find its way through—usually through mental and bodily symptoms which, while painful in their own right, are also signs of deeper psychological discord. Working toward healing involves developing insight into myself and facing my own psychological depths, in the company of someone I trust enough to accompany me to places within myself I have not yet gone.

Informed by these convictions, depth therapists are curious about their patients’ reasons for doing and believing certain things and are slow to accept any word or action as trivial or the result of chance, because they are on the lookout for the influence of unconscious processes on their clients’ understanding of themselves and the world.

Depth therapists also have an appreciation for the complexity of the psyche’s problems and strive to be empathetic, recognizing in themselves many of the self-evasions practiced unconsciously by their patients. They place a priority on the therapeutic relationship, knowing that it is often easier to be honest with oneself in the presence of a trusted other. Finally, they exhibit a basic faith that it is possible to be honest with oneself, and that the effort will be worth it. This is the sort of psychotherapy I practice.

Depth Therapy, Spirituality, & Christianity

I am familiar with several religious traditions and approaches to spirituality, but I am myself a Catholic Christian and my understanding of the relation between psychotherapy and spirituality is informed by my own religious faith. I do not think, however, that one must be a Christian, or even believe in God, to be an authentically spiritual person. So although what I say below is presented in a Christian idiom, I hope those from other traditions and practices will find something in common between it and their own commitments.

The Christian tradition holds that God is beyond us, among us, and within us; both the source of all that exists and “nearer to me than my innermost being” (St. Augustine, Confessions 3.6). God is Ultimate Reality and Absolute Presence.

But Christianity also holds that we humans are on the run from reality and presence. We find ways to avoid or ignore what is happening around and within us and, when we do notice, we often repress or misrepresent it to ourselves and others. Like St. Paul we find ourselves doing what we do not want, and refraining from doing what we do want (Romans 7:15-16). Like David we find that we are a mystery to ourselves, entreating God to make known to us our own thoughts and deepest selves (Psalm 139:23-24).

It’s not hard to imagine how this sort of evasion and deceit alienates us from ourselves. But because God is ultimate Reality and Presence, the flight from awareness, understanding, and self-presence is also a flight from God. The further we get from ourselves, the further we are from the divine.

If this is so, then the path inward, toward self-knowledge, coincides with the path upward, back to God. Consider some examples of this convergence: if I remain unaware how much my conceptions of God are informed by negative experiences with early caregivers, I mistake for Reality what is in fact my own psychological projection. Or again, I may consciously affirm that God loves me unconditionally, while unconsciously living in mortal fear of divine judgment—“crying ‘peace, peace,’ when there is no peace” (Jeremiah 6:14). 

Christianity has recognized this relation between self-knowledge and knowledge of the divine from its inception. In the gospels, Christ tells his followers that the manifest presence of God does not come to us like something that can be physically observed, “for look: the kingdom of God is within you” (Luke 7:20-21). The early Christian philosopher-theologian St. Clement of Alexandria says: “The most beautiful learning and the greatest is to know one’s self. For whoever knows the self knows God, and knowing God, will be made like God” (The Pedagogue 3.1). And St. Catherine of Siena recounts a dialogue with God in which she’s told: “Here is the way, if you would come to perfect knowledge and enjoyment of me, eternal Life: Never leave the knowledge of yourself” (Dialogue §4). The more authentic our own subjectivity, the more genuine our insight into Ultimate Reality.

Because our conceptions of God—our “object of ultimate concern,” as the Protestant theologian Paul Tillich put it—exert such an enormous influence on our psychological life, and because the self-knowledge instilled in depth therapy bears directly on these conceptions, clients may desire to incorporate their spiritual concerns and experiences into their therapeutic work. I am able and willing to help with this.