What is Depth Psychology?

The simplest definition of depth psychology is the study of the unconscious. It was psychiatrist and founder of analytic psychology, Carl Gustav Jung, who offered this easy-to-understand explanation of the contents of the unconscious, as “everything of which I know, but of which I am not at the moment thinking; everything of which I was once conscious but have now forgotten; everything perceived by my senses, but not noted by my conscious mind; everything which, involuntarily and without paying attention to it, I feel, think, remember, want, and do; all the future things that are taking shape in me and will sometime come to consciousness: all this is the content of the unconscious.”

Depth Psychology draws on much more than just psychology, however. It integrates ideas from a wide variety of disciplines, including the arts, literature, philosophy, mythology, music and other disciplines. The term was actually first coined by Zürich psychiatrist and professor Eugen Bleuler at the Burghölzli Asylum in Zürich where Jung first started his psychiatry career. It was subsequently used by both Sigmund Freud and Jung and their followers. So not just Jungians practice depth psychology.

Unearthing the often mysterious contents of our unconscious can by hard to do on our own sometimes, and that’s why depth psychotherapists can help get you started. To learn more, see my next blog post.