“Any psychology that believes itself, that takes itself at its own word, no longer reflects the psyche or serves soul-making. The more hard evidence and solid backing a psychology finds for its hypotheses, the less its ideas open the soul’s eye toward concretely specific insights. The righter it becomes, the wronger its effects; the more tested, the less true.”1—James Hillman
Modern Depth Therapy isn’t just the name of my private psychotherapy practice. It’s a living philosophy of the craft of psychotherapy, borne out of personal and professional experience. This way of working has been part lovingly chiseled like a sculpture—as well as conjured out of sheer necessity (plus some punk-rock scrappiness). It grew from a deep need I saw in the world, my own frustrations in training institutions, my work with clients, and many years spent parked in the chair as therapy client myself.
Ultimately, Modern Depth Therapy is a response to psychotherapy’s increasing overreliance on science that often comes at the expense of soul, relationship, and a more expansive, worldly view of healing. Equally, it’s also a response to the stilted, “one-person,”*2 hierarchical therapy model frequently exemplified in traditional depth therapy (or depth at the expense of relationship).
Last but not least, it’s a response calibrated to the current zeitgeist—today’s unique concerns and challenges, viewed through a social justice-informed and trauma-competent lens. Modern Depth Therapy serves to bridge the gaps between different psychology traditions, the needs of the soul, and the realities of our time.
Psychotherapy is both art and science.
When we forget the art, we lose the soul of the work.
Holding the tension of logos and mythos
We live in an age devoted to logos—an ancient Greek philosophical term describing the domain of logic, which is buttressed by the stately pillars of hard facts, statistics, and data. The fervor for logos extends to virtually all aspects of contemporary life, including but not limited to psychotherapy. For example, the mental health field has increasingly favored neuroscience, evidence-based protocols such as cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), algorithms—and, more recently, the use of AI and AI-based language learning models (LLMs). But what exactly is lost when logos is privileged at the cost of mythos—the domain of the imagination, symbol, myth, and story? According to Australian author and scholar David Tacey (my boldface and spacing for emphasis)3:
“Logos assumes that mythos was merely a bad or infantile version of science, a silly way of understanding the world. But Jung’s defense of mythos was to argue that it is the best possible way of knowing the core of reality, that cannot be disclosed by science, logic or rationality.
“Jung believed the mythical mode of perception is not a primitive stage in the history of mind, but a language in the structure of mind. It is a language we lose contact with at our peril, because when severed from the symbolic domain we lose our relationship with the cosmos and the deeper life within ourselves.”
To be clear: I’m not a Luddite. I do believe certain elements of logos have their place in psychology. For example, neuroscience-based trauma education and techniques can be judiciously used as part of a treatment plan. Further, more regulated versions of LLMs may eventually be able to effectively provide people with supplementary mental health education and resources when appropriate. (I use the word “supplementary” to indicate that I do not see LLMs as a replacement for the therapeutic relationship or for psychotherapy itself.)
I support the recent legislative efforts—such as those in Illinois and Vermont—to establish substantial guardrails around the use of AI in mental health.† These laws recognize what many therapists and clients intuitively understand: while AI may become an increasingly valuable tool in certain circumstances, psychotherapy itself requires human relationship and oversight, ethical judgment, and professional accountability.
Rather than reactively rejecting logos wholesale and exclusively turning toward mythos, I strive to hold the tension of the opposites between them. A Jungian concept, the tension of the opposites maintains that when we find a way to tolerate the conflict between contradictory ideas, it can assist us in tapping into our transcendent function. This can help give rise to a new, third idea or symbol. In one way, Modern Depth Therapy is such a third idea.
Why does soul matter now?
We live in a time of great paradox: a gluttony of information but a dearth of meaning. Although we are interconnected 24/7 via DMs, pings, posts, emojis, calls, reels, tweets, stories, voicemails, messages, Snapchats, and texts—we’re more isolated than ever before. There is a gnawing emptiness at the core of our frenetic busyness, consumption, and grasping.4 (I also see the contemporary compulsion to scroll as an expression of the psyche’s craving for symbol and story.)
While the age of logos has given us extraordinary gifts, it has also severed us from something timeless and crucial. We have been dislocated from the imaginal, the body, and each other. And we have lost our connection to myth and symbol: the structures that provide roadmaps for the human experience and containers for the uncertain, grand energies of existence.
In a reflection shared by Jung Southern Africa and attributed to Jungian analyst Nici Partridge5:
“Exile begins when we abandon dream, symbol, body, feeling, imagination, and genuine relationship. Soul withers where life becomes performative, transactional, and sterile. The search for home is not only social—it is psychic. Home may begin where we look up, switch off, listen inwardly, and meet one another again in real relationships.”
Soul matters in psychotherapy—not as a religious or metaphysical concept, but as a practical orientation toward what is most alive, most true, and most in need of tending in a human life.
Soul is what makes meaning possible. And meaning has, and will always be, vital to the health and fullness of the psyche and life itself.
I call my therapy philosophy “psychotherapy with soul.” This means that I strive to create a therapeutic space that is:
A place to fill your cup—Therapy not only provides a place to tend to your hurts. It’s also a place to gather nourishment and inspiration, amplify your strengths and passions, and stoke your life force and creativity. If you desire, therapy can also be a place to explore spiritual and existential matters.
Empowering—You are the ultimate expert on yourself and your life. Therapy is a collaboration between you and the therapist. I am also committed to providing therapy that is anti-oppressive, as well as social justice- and trauma-competent. Further, I strive to provide an LGBTQQIP2SAA-friendly space to explore sexuality, gender, and all flavors of relationships, including those that are kink/BDSM, nontraditional, or poly/CNM.
Genuine—The therapist is real, warm, sincere, and human, as well as professional.
Heartfelt—Vulnerability, authenticity, and humor are welcome.
Integrative—The whole person is considered (mind/body/spirit), not just the symptoms.
The costs of mainstream psychotherapy without soul
Centuries after philosopher René Descartes developed his theory of the separateness of mind and body, our society is still feeling the aftershocks of the “Cartesian split.” The field of mainstream psychotherapy is no exception, as it continues to struggle with binary thinking: mind and body, reason and feeling, science and soul. Therapy that fails to hold this tension between seeming opposites, and particularly that disavows soul, carries significant costs. These include depriving therapy of the juice that powers it, rushing to provide a solution instead of sitting with the unknown, overly restricting what is defined as “therapeutic” or “healing,” and even enacting harm.
Cost #1: Privileging logos over mythos dries up the juice that powers therapy
A therapeutic space dedicated to logos is chock-full of techniques, interventions, and agendas. While these have their place, when implemented in overdrive, they can inhibit the development and spontaneity of therapeutic relationship. This, in turn, can thwart the therapeutic process. When this happens, the voice of the soul doesn’t get sufficient room to speak. Its essential guidance is extinguished before it can even be articulated, let alone understood.
Fixating on logos distracts from the client’s connection to their unique inner world and to the wisdom that can emerge through symbol, dreams, the body, and spontaneous insight. This dams up a wealth of real-time information about what the individual actually needs in order to heal and grow.
The juice that powers the vitality and velocity of therapy doesn’t flow from theories, modalities, and manuals alone. It flows from the therapeutic relationship—the crucible for the soul’s expression. (As a nod to logos, even standard scientific literature acknowledges that the therapeutic relationship is the greatest determinant of positive outcomes in therapy.6)
Other crucial elements that support therapy are the therapist’s empathy and humility, the encouragement of the natural unfolding of the therapeutic process, and what I call “embracing the great unknown”: that is, the aspects of self, life, and therapy that are uncertain and mysterious. (I often wonder if part of psychotherapy’s anxious grip on logos is a defense against contending with the ambiguous aspects of human existence, as well as therapists’ fear of “not knowing,” therefore appearing unworthy of the “expert” mantle.)
Cost #2: Sacrificing sitting with the unknown for a quick “solution”
There is brilliance and value in “not knowing.” It can help to cultivate deeper insight, resilience, and creative approaches to life’s difficulties. According to Nigerian psychologist, author, and thinker Báyò Akómoláfé, “You see, my people speak about getting lost as a response to the crisis of being too found…. There is a sense in which we can become so settled in our anxieties and so settled in our questions that we lose the creativity of the Nomad. And this concept, of course, is nomadical, it’s an invitation to get lost.”7
Hence, rather than forcing a tidy answer, therapy can be a place to wonder and wander together. To sit with uncomfortable feelings, dream upon them, make art about them, and see what emerges in the crucible of the therapeutic relationship.
Cost #3: Restricting definitions of healing
James Fadiman, co-founder of the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology (now Sofia University), where I trained in transpersonal psychology, has argued that mainstream psychology has become increasingly “scientistic,” adopting the belief that science and materialist reductionism provide the only objective means of understanding reality.8 Indeed, logos, as it shows up in mainstream psychology, loves empirically validated knowledge, particularly in the form of “evidence-based practices” that produce quantifiable “positive outcomes.” This creates a very narrow, data-driven, heavily biased conceptualization of what fosters healing, what healing even looks like, and who gets to determine if, when, and how healing happens. Operating from this narrow viewpoint can obfuscate and complexify the simple, humble, profound truths that often reside at the heart of genuine healing—the bone-deep wisdom, inner knowing, and deepened connection to self, soul, and other.
Psychotherapy is both art and science. When we forget the art, we lose the soul of the work. Since the time of Descartes, we have been given the message over and over again that soul is unimportant, irrelevant, or even a florid figment of the “New Age” imagination. I am here to tell you that soul still matters. It always has. In life and in therapy. This isn’t beholden to any particular religion, and it does not have to mean rejecting science. This is a call to something different, something truly integrative, and, dare I say, something that can re-enchant the practice of therapy (and life).
According to psychologist and author Sand Chang, Ph.D., solely relying on logos as arbiter of what is and isn’t healing, valuable, or meaningful is harmful and has deep roots in oppression (including but not limited to racism, colonialism, homophobia/transphobia, classism, and ableism).9 They write (my boldface and spacing for emphasis):
“Some mental health providers talk about “evidence-based practices” (EBPs) as superior to anything else. Let’s remember that: there is no true objectivity, most research is done on people in dominant culture and therefore not generalizable to marginalized groups, and there is inherent supremacy embedded in the thinking that Western medicine, with its overreliance on words and numbers to capture human experience, will save us all.
These ways of approaching the human body and experience will not only fail us, but actually cause harm. There is no single ‘right’ way to do therapy or healing work—assuming ‘evidence-based practice’ is superior to all other approaches (including Indigenous practices) is dehumanizing.
Keep in mind that many approaches that have been presented as ‘evidence-based’ or based on ‘objectivity’ have contributed to the harm or genocide of BIPOC, trans people, disabled people, neurodivergent people, fat people, and other marginalized groups.”
Cost #4: Therapy harm: When the cure becomes the poison
The harm Chang describes extends beyond research and all too often lands in the consulting room itself. When therapists exclusively turn towards logos to inform psychotherapy, they run the risk of operating in “fixit” mode, where the therapist is positioned as the expert and the client as subject with “problems” to “solve,” thereby reenacting a hierarchical, colonialist dynamic.
Rigidly imposing protocols, manuals, interventions, tips, and agendas can result in neglecting to be present and attuned to the client in front of us. This can actually recreate the original trauma of feeling fixed but not actually held, as well as unseen, unheard, and patronized.
When therapy worships at the altar of logos, multicultural ways of healing and seeing, such as dreamwork, ritual, and artmaking, are devalued, dismissed, or ignored entirely. Last, if the therapist holds too fastidiously to a particular modality and isn’t able to solicit and tolerate feedback, be flexible, and collaborate with the client, therapy can enact harm—as well as fail to repair that harm.
The costs of depth therapy without relationship
Logos-centered therapy isn’t the only form of therapy that can sorely miss the mark and do harm. Traditional, mythos-centered depth therapy has its own shadow—the embrace of mythos at the cost of relationship.
The old-school psychodynamic model of the poker-faced, “blank slate” analyst, and the inherently shaming “one-person” therapeutic frame does not model a healthy relationship. And it is virtually impossible to truly heal in an unhealthy relationship of any kind, including a therapeutic one.
The one-person model of therapy reflects a dated, faulty understanding of the conditions needed for healing to occur. In regard to logos, it even flies in the face of what the field of interpersonal neurobiology teaches us about the importance of attunement in psychotherapy.10 The old-school, hierarchical depth psychology model of therapy can leave clients with a sense that there’s “no there there” (to paraphrase writer Gertrude Stein’s comment after visiting her demolished childhood home in Oakland). What is the use of therapy’s requirement of the ‘client needing to attach to the therapist’ if the therapist doesn’t show up in such a way that even makes genuine attachment possible?
The therapeutic relationship is not incidental to healing—it’s the hub around which everything else turns. Rather than being a blank screen, the therapist is a real, warm, present, imperfect human being, bringing their full self—thoughtfully and ethically—into the therapy.
This also means being trauma-competent, not merely trauma-informed. Trauma-informed awareness without genuine competency (cultivated through training, experience, consultation, education, and ongoing self-reflection on the part of the therapist) can leave clients re-exposed rather than supported. Modern Depth Therapy takes seriously the weight of what people carry—and works with it in a non-hierarchical, non-shaming, slowly paced, and reverent way that preserves the client’s dignity and the wisdom of their soul.
Turning the depth lens on itself
Another facet that makes this Modern Depth Therapy—and not simply a nostalgic return to Jung—is a willingness to turn the depth lens on depth psychology itself. The frameworks that inform my practice (anti-oppressive, anti-hierarchical, feminist, trauma-competent, relational, social justice-informed) are grounded in established clinical frameworks and align with evolving professional ethical standards. These standards are increasingly reflected in professional codes of ethics for therapists—such as those of the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy (AAMFT) and the National Association of Social Workers (NASW)—which emphasize equity, diversity, cultural responsiveness, systemic awareness, and advocacy.11,12 These frameworks are designed to expand empathy, surface overlooked perspectives, and invite the same sitting with discomfort, uncertainty, and self-reflection that depth work has always required.
To embody the spirit of depth psychology—not merely its letter—requires the capacity to turn the depth lens on its own assumptions. This is the condition for contemporary depth work. The question of how to hold the tension between depth work and questions of culture, power, and ideology is not a problem to be solved. It is the ongoing work belonging to us all. Our collective capacity to hold that tension—and to keep asking the difficult questions—may determine whether depth psychology evolves or erodes over time.
In summary
Modern Depth Therapy is a response to the overreliance on logos at the expense of soul. Equally, it’s a response to the sterile, one-person therapy model frequently used in traditional depth work. It’s also a response to the needs of our time, embracing anti-oppressive, anti-hierarchical, feminist, trauma-competent, relational, social justice-informed frameworks. Last, it’s predicated upon always being able to look at itself, grounded in the ongoing process of self-reflection and critical thinking.
Modern Depth Therapy is a living philosophy and an ongoing art project. I created the palette below to illustrate how I envision the relationship between the modalities I use as well as the vital aspects of therapy I discussed in this article. Each session looks different. The beauty of the palette model is that the art of the therapy is co-created by therapist and client. A touch of this color, a wash of that color.
This palette will continue to evolve as I do, as the field does, as the culture does. What remains constant is the orientation: depth over surface, relationship over technique, and soul over symptom, while embracing the fullness and mystery of what it means to be human.
If you’re curious about working together, you can learn more at moderndepth.com. And if this spoke to you, feel free to share with someone who you think would appreciate it.