Jung observed that when an analyst sits with a patient, there are not one but two people in therapy. The patient is doing the work of their analysis. The analyst is doing something too — feelings arise, thoughts emerge uninvited, reactions occur that have no obvious explanation in what was just said.
This is countertransference — the analyst’s inner response to the patient. And it is, when used well, one of the most precise instruments available in clinical work.
What countertransference tells you
The analyst who notices, in a session, that they feel inexplicably sad — or suddenly protective — or mildly irritated for no clear reason — is receiving information. Not about themselves alone, but about what the patient is carrying and cannot yet put into words. The patient’s unconscious communicates with the analyst’s unconscious before language has a chance to catch up.
Used well, this is invaluable. The analyst tracks their inner experience not as distraction, but as data.
But countertransference can also carry something that belongs to the analyst — lack of compassion that arrives in a session, a diminished availability, a reaction too connected to the analyst’s own history. When this happens, the analyst has work to do — not with the patient, but in their own therapy and supervision.
The gatekeeper
Philippe Jacquet would not send one of his children to see a therapist who was not themselves in therapy. The analyst’s ongoing personal analysis and supervision are what stand between being a therapist and becoming something more dangerous: a guru.
The guru is the figure who has stopped questioning themselves. Who speaks from a position of unexamined authority. The therapeutic relationship, without the anchor of supervision and personal analysis, can drift in this direction without the analyst noticing.
Philippe remains in analysis. He remains in supervision. This is the protection he offers every person who comes to work with him — the assurance that there is a structure in place that keeps him honest, that holds him accountable.
Every therapist should be in supervision. At minimum. Without exception.
The biggest teacher
Philippe has trained with remarkable clinicians. He has studied with exceptional teachers. He has read, absorbed, and been shaped by a substantial body of theory across several decades.
His biggest teacher has been none of these.
It has been his patients.
They have taught him more than any seminar, any supervision, any text. He remains, session after session, genuinely astonished — by their resources, by their creativity, by their ingenuity in living through what life has brought them. By how much courage it takes to walk into a room and begin to look honestly at a life.
To all of them: thank you.
Theory and the human being
As Jung wrote: “Learn your theories as well as you can, but put them aside when you touch the miracle of the living soul.”
Theory is a map. It is not the territory. It gives the analyst a framework for orientation, a language for what they observe. All of this is necessary.
And then a person walks into the room. And they are not a case, not a diagnosis, not an illustration of a concept. They are themselves — particular, unrepeatable, carrying a life that no theory fully anticipated.
The theory recedes. The person remains.
“My biggest teacher has not been the great analysts I have trained with or the books I have read. It has been my patients — their resources, their creativity, their courage in living through what they carry. Learn your theory. And then put it aside when you touch the miracle of the living soul.” — Philippe Jacquet
Book a consultation with Philippe Jacquet — psychotherapist and Jungian analyst, London.