Know Yourself — The Purpose of Analysis
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.
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
What analysis offers
Analysis offers genuine acquaintance with the self. Not certainty. Not answers to every question. But a real relationship with the person who makes every decision, who wakes each morning, who will one day look back on how this time was spent.
Jung called this individuation: the lifelong process of becoming who you actually are. Not who you were told to be. Not who the world needed you to be. Who you are.
The Socratic thread
Know thyself — gnothi seauton — was inscribed at the entrance to the Temple of Apollo at Delphi. Jungian analysis is, among other things, the clinical practice of taking that instruction seriously: as a sustained, honest, and ultimately liberating relationship with who one actually is.
Book a consultation with Philippe Jacquet — psychotherapist and Jungian analyst, London.