Psychotherapy Concepts
A clinical reference library explaining the approaches, conditions, and ideas at the heart of our practice, in English and French.
Active Imagination
Active imagination is Jung's method for engaging consciously with the unconscious, working with its images and figures …
Addiction and freedom
People with addiction invoke freedom, their right to drink, their right to use. But addiction is watching the same film …
Addiction Therapy
Addiction therapy goes beyond stopping. It addresses what the addiction was doing, what it has cost, and what a life …
Alexithymia : When Feelings Have No Words
Alexithymia is the difficulty identifying and describing emotions. It is found at high rates in people with eating …
Anger in Therapy
Anger is not the problem. It is information. What it signals, and what lies beneath it, is where the therapeutic work …
Anorexia : Beyond the Symptom
Anorexia is not about food or weight. It is about control, identity, and survival. Philippe Jacquet, eating disorder …
Anxiety and Excitement : The Same Soup
Anxiety and excitement are not opposites. They are made from the same two ingredients, fear and faith, in different …
Archetypes : Jungian Theory
Archetypes are universal patterns in the human psyche, the Hero, the Shadow, the Self. Jung's concept explains why …
Art therapy
Philippe Jacquet holds a master's degree in art psychotherapy. He explains why art therapy works particularly well for …
Attachment styles
Attachment style is the relational template formed in early childhood. Learn the four styles, secure, avoidant, …
Body Dysmorphia : When the Mirror Lies
Body dysmorphic disorder is a condition in which the person perceives a serious defect in their appearance that others …
Body Image
Body image is not what the body looks like. It is what the person believes about the body they inhabit. That belief can …
Boundaries : the private garden
Boundaries define and protect the self, physically, emotionally, and psychologically. Learn why people who struggle with …
Burnout : the pasta that keeps cooking
Burnout does not stop when you leave the office. Philippe Jacquet explains the pasta metaphor, who actually burns out, …
CBT : what it can and cannot do
CBT has real clinical value, but it has limitations. Philippe Jacquet explains symptom displacement through a striking …
Codependency
Codependency is a relational structure where one person loses themselves in relation to another. Learn the clinical …
Complexes
A complex is an emotionally charged cluster of images and memories around a core. What complexes are, how they take …
Control and letting go
Much of life's stress comes from trying to control outcomes. Learn the difference between wants and needs, and why …
Couples Therapy
Philippe Jacquet explains the circular argument at the heart of most couples' difficulties, why conflict is inevitable, …
Depth and frequency in analysis
The depth reached in Jungian analysis depends on time and frequency, not intention. Learn why coming more often changes …
Dream Analysis
Dreams are productions of the unconscious in which the ego plays no role. Philippe Jacquet explains the compensatory …
Eating Disorder Recovery
Eating disorder recovery is not just restoring weight or stopping behaviours. It is building a relationship with the …
Eating Disorders and Trauma
The clinical relationship between eating disorders and trauma, why food becomes a way of managing what cannot otherwise …
Feeling Has a Function
Many people come to therapy because they feel too much and want to feel less. But feeling is not the problem. It is the …
Gaslighting : When Reality Is Denied
Gaslighting is manipulation that makes someone doubt their own memory and perception. What it is, how it works, and how …
Getting Out of the Coffin
The coffin is the enclosure built when life became too much. Safe, but airless. The invitation, offered gently, is to …
HALT : Hungry, Angry, Lonely, Tired
HALT is a foundational recovery tool: four basic states that make relapse most likely. Recognising them is the first …
How to Help Someone with an Eating
What partners, parents and families can do, and what they cannot do, when someone they love has an eating disorder. A …
Intensity : the best enemy of intimacy
The more intense a feeling, the less likely you are actually seeing the person in front of you. Philippe Jacquet …
Know Yourself : The Purpose of Analysis
Psychotherapy is an opportunity to meet yourself, perhaps for the first time. The alternative is arriving at the end of …
Life is not fair
It is not fair. Philippe Jacquet agrees. But grief has a direction, and at some point the question has to change from …
Men, eating disorders and the language
Men with eating disorders often say what's expected in therapy without being connected to it. Philippe Jacquet explains …
Muscle Dysmorphia (Bigorexia)
Muscle dysmorphia, informally called bigorexia, is the male equivalent of anorexia, the same obsessive relationship with …
Passion as Protection Against Addiction
Where there is passion, genuine engagement with life and meaning. There is less addiction. This is not a theory. It is a …
Perfectionism : The Exhausting Standard
Perfectionism is not high standards. It is the belief that anything less than perfect is worthless, and that the self is …
Psychological Types
Jung's psychological types: introversion and extraversion plus the four functions, thinking, feeling, sensation and …
Psychotherapy vs Counselling
What is the difference between psychotherapy and counselling? A clinical explanation of when each is appropriate, and …
Relapse : What It Is and What It Is Not
Relapse is not a moral failure. It is a characteristic of addiction, and understanding it clearly is the most effective …
Safe Space in Therapy
A safe space in therapy is not comfort or absence of difficulty. It is a reliable container in which difficult things …
Sex addiction and pornography
Sex addiction and pornography addiction are not primarily about sex. Philippe Jacquet explains the neurochemical links, …
Symptoms as Anaesthetic
Many people use symptoms, restriction, substances, avoidance, as an anaesthetic against pain. Therapy removes the …
Synchronicity
Synchronicity is Jung's term for meaningful coincidence: events connected by meaning rather than cause. What it is, and …
The collective unconscious
The collective unconscious is Jung's term for the deepest layer of the psyche, the repository of archetypes shared …
The cost of therapy
Therapy is not cheap, but how do you price your mental health? Philippe Jacquet explains cancellation fees, the mental …
The Demon : Being in the Grip of the Split
The word demon comes from a Greek root meaning to divide. To be in the grip of the demon is to be divided within …
The desire to grow up
The most important role of a parent is giving their child the desire to grow up. Drawing on his doctoral research, …
The Ego
In Jungian psychology the ego is the centre of conscious awareness, the I we take ourselves to be: necessary, but only a …
The gym : the church of self-hatred
For many people with body image difficulties, the gym functions not as a place of health but as an arena of comparison …
The myth of insight
Insight, understanding why something is the way it is, is valuable but insufficient. Learn why knowing is not enough, …
The Persona
In Jungian psychology, the Persona is the adaptive face we present to the world. Understanding yours is the first step …
The Self
In Jung's psychology the Self is the archetype of wholeness and the organising centre of the whole psyche, larger than …
The Shadow
The Shadow in Jungian psychology is not simply the darkest part of who you are. It is everything pushed out of the self …
The Tribe : Why Belonging is a Clinical Need
Human beings are wired for belonging. Without a tribe, without people among whom you feel known, psychological risk …
The Twelve Step Programme
The twelve step programme is not perfect. But millions of people worldwide are clean because of it. Philippe Jacquet …
The Unconscious
The unconscious is not a metaphor. It is the part of the mind that operates outside awareness and drives a significant …
The younger self
The wounds formed in childhood do not disappear in therapy. Philippe Jacquet explains why the younger self is not a …
Tolerating the unknown
Exploring the unconscious requires the capacity to bear uncertainty and move without a map. The anxiety of not knowing …
Training as a Jungian analyst
Becoming a Jungian analyst is not a course that ends with a certificate. Philippe Jacquet explains what the training …
Transference
Transference is the unconscious process by which patients redirect past relational patterns onto the analyst. In Jungian …
Two people in the room
Jung observed that when an analyst sits with a patient, two people are in therapy. Philippe Jacquet explains …
Understanding Addiction: Definition & Mechanisms
Addiction is not a moral failure or a lack of willpower. It is a chronic condition with neurobiological, psychological …
Understanding Trauma
Trauma is the wound left when experience exceeds the capacity to process it. Understanding what trauma is, and is not, …
What is Addiction?
Addiction is not a moral failure. It is a cycle of acting in and acting out, a mechanism for avoiding pain that …
What is an Eating Disorder?
Eating disorders are not about food. They are about feeling, and the need to control or avoid it.
What is ARFID?
ARFID, Avoidant/Restrictive Food Intake Disorder, is an eating disorder with no link to body image. It is driven by …
What is Countertransference?
Countertransference is the therapist's emotional response to the client. In skilled hands, it is not a problem to be …
What is EMDR Therapy?
EMDR, Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing, is a clinically proven approach to trauma. It processes what the …
What is Euphoric Recall?
Euphoric recall is the memory that lies. The brain replays the pleasure of the substance and edits out the consequences. …
What is Individuation?
Individuation is Jung's term for the lifelong process of becoming who you actually are, not who you were told to be, but …
What is Jungian Analysis?
Jungian analysis is depth psychotherapy rooted in Carl Jung. A Jungian analyst works with dreams, symbols and …
What is Mindfulness : Really
Mindfulness is not about stopping thought. It is the practice of bringing the mind to where the body already is, the …
What is Orthorexia?
Orthorexia is an obsessive preoccupation with eating only pure or healthy food. It is often praised rather than …
What is Psychotherapy
Psychotherapy is not the medical model. The therapist is not the doctor and you are not the patient waiting to be cured. …
What is Recovery?
Recovery is not the disappearance of the urge. It is the ability to live freely in its presence, to feel what is there …
What is Relapse?
Relapse is not the moment of picking up a drink or drug. By then the relapse has already been underway for weeks. …
What is Shadow Work?
Shadow work is the process of meeting the parts of yourself you have rejected or never allowed to develop. It is about …
What is Shame
Shame says I am wrong, not I did something wrong. It is carried silently for decades. Its remedy is the very thing it …
What is Trauma?
Trauma is not the event itself. It is what happens inside the nervous system when the event exceeds what the person …
What to expect from a first session
A first therapy session is not a revelation. It is an assessment, on both sides. What actually happens, why chemistry …
Why your therapist should be accredited
Psychotherapy is not a protected profession in the UK. Anyone can call themselves a therapist. Philippe Jacquet explains …
You Will Suffer Better
The goal of therapy is not to stop suffering. It is to suffer better, to have a different relationship with pain, one in …