One overarching concept that informs my work on a daily basis is the feminine principle as outlined in Barbara Sullivan’s (1989) book Psychotherapy Grounded in the Feminine Principle. Metaphor, the body, and being instead of doing are basic to the feminine principle, which “values the noncompetitive creation of things that are appreciated for their own essence regardless of their comparative qualities” (p. 19). I deeply believe that a therapeutic relationship that values the feminine principle has the potentiality to allow patients to heal at their own rate and to begin to define and understand themselves on their own terms.

A portion of my decision to become a therapist was because of a grave sense of the dysfunction within the greater American culture. Depth psychology, the Jungian branch in particular, has an intrinsic understanding that individual change is the starting point for cultural change. Jung’s concept of the “unexpected third thing,” a unique and individual solution that individuals find by sitting in the uncomfortable place created by the tension of the opposites, brings not only an inherent sense of meaning, but also is the place of unique solutions to not only personal, but cultural problems.

My understanding of the psychotherapeutic relationship has led me to believe that the central component of healing work starts and continues to depend on the safety and containment of the relationship. According to John Mills (2005) in relational psychoanalytic psychotherapy

Depth psychologist Donald Kalsched (1996), in his book, The Inner World of Trauma: Archetypal Defenses of the Personal Spirit, addressed the problematic relationship within the ego-Self axis of people who have experienced trauma at a young age. Kalsched postulated that in cases of childhood trauma, the primitive Self attempts to protect the young child by creating a split in the psyche. Jung (1937/1978) stated that “the tendency to split means that parts of the psyche detach themselves from consciousness to such an extent that they not only appear foreign, but lead to an autonomous life of their own” (p. 121). Children are therefore unaware of reactions, feelings, and beliefs that are parts of themselves.