What is psychotherapy all about? the phenomenology of psychotherapy

Psychotherapy is the moment in which, through the encounter between the subjectivities of therapist and patient, a new meaning is co-constructed through the very experience of the clinical encounter. Within this process, a metamorphosis of space and time takes place, along with the possibility of a new relationship with the world, with oneself, and with others.

Giving form and meaning to lived experiences is the driving force behind this transformation:

“What we call psychotherapy is, in the end, nothing other than a practice intended to enable the patient to ‘see’ the overall structure of human existence, their ‘being-in-the-world,’ and to understand the point at which they have lost their way” (L. Binswanger, Three Forms of Failed Existence).

The immediate and primary aim of Jungian analysis is not the elimination of the symptoms of distress. If that were the case, we would be operating within a medical-scientific discourse, one that is not interested in grasping the meaning of distress but only in combating it.

Analysis, by contrast, is not governed by the categories of the natural sciences: it is a life experience in which the therapeutic aspect, the containment of suffering, is only one of its constitutive elements.

Grasping the meaning of internal and external conflicts is the heart of Jungian analysis. Once grasped, this meaning can open the way to an overall expansion of the personality, which is the true transformative process at which analysis aims.

Within the analytic experience, psychic and often physical symptoms are therefore interpreted as the revelation of what is hidden or rejected within us — the Shadow, according to Jung — and which enters the scene autonomously, unanchored from a psychic center and often lacking awareness of its own manifestation.

In moving toward an expansion of the personality, analysis fosters a more conscious relationship among the various components of the psyche, whose dissociation we call “distress.” This bringing-into-relation is the Symbolic process — from sym-ballein, “to put together” — advocated by Jung.

Jungian analysis does not exhaust itself in causal explanation or in the clarification of psychic dynamics.

It is a process that promotes a transformative tension, one that in itself is never fully concluded and certainly extends beyond the analysis itself, in a direction that is always twofold: to achieve a fuller Adaptation to one’s history, and to more fully realize oneself while respecting the common good.

This does not take place in obedience to a predetermined goal, but with consideration for individual possibilities and respect for the patient’s psychic situation, including that of those who may not have the capacity or willingness for symbolic activity.

This rests on the conviction that the analytic relationship is already, in itself, a transformative symbolic act, because of the new possibilities it opens up by revealing new scenarios and fostering new currents of life.