Tags
One of the central purposes of depth psychotherapy and Jungian analysis is self-knowledge — not as a philosophical exercise, but as a lived experience. To know who is actually living this life.
“Psychotherapy is an opportunity to learn to know yourself. What you don’t want is arriving at the end of your life and realising that you spent all of it with someone who is you — but a stranger.” — Philippe Jacquet
In the clinical context used by Philippe Jacquet, the demon refers to the experience of internal division — the state in which a person does what they do not want to do, and cannot do what they want. The etymology confirms this: the Greek daimon derives from the root meaning “to divide.”
The Persona is the adaptive aspect of the self — the face developed to function within a particular society, family, or culture. Named after masks worn by actors in ancient Greek theatre, the Persona is not false, but it is always partial. What it excludes becomes the Shadow.
In Jungian psychology, the Shadow is the unconscious repository of everything the conscious self has rejected, suppressed, or never developed — not because it is necessarily evil, but because it did not fit the persona required to survive in a particular family, culture, or society.
Countertransference refers to the therapist’s emotional, psychological, and somatic responses to the client — including feelings, images, and physical sensations that arise during the work. Originally seen as a contaminant to be controlled, countertransference is now understood in depth psychotherapy as a primary source of clinical information.
Individuation is the central concept in Jungian psychology — the lifelong process of becoming a whole, integrated individual. It is not about perfection. It is about the progressive integration of all aspects of the self into an authentic way of being.
Shadow work is the Jungian practice of bringing unconscious, rejected, or undeveloped aspects of the self into conscious awareness. It is not about dwelling in darkness — it is about recovering wholeness.
The Shadow forms because certain qualities do not fit the persona developed for our particular world. What is excluded does not dissolve — it waits. Over time, the unmet Shadow expresses itself through compulsive behaviour, through what we find intolerable in others, or through symptoms.