“In many mysterious ways, Psyche creates opportunities for transcendence and healing, while at the same time inhibiting our involvement in a greater and meaningful life. It was Jung’s hunger for the relationship with the soul that motivated him to write these words about the ultimate goal and the most important of therapy.

From the miraculous birth of a child to the greatness of a great work of art, each one appears in response to something very personal, being at the same time orchestrated and guided by unseen archetypal processes. The same happens with those seemingly endless repetitions of pain and disappointments that have brought us to our knees, in despair, gripped by the fear of being cursed with an immutable fate. M. L. von Franz explains how, in many fairy tales, the hero is actually cursed and that “redemption” means the breaking of archetypal possession and the release from the curse.

The depth of these findings informs our clinical work, showing us that these innate, self-organizing processes literally structure the interactions that take place between the client and the therapist. These formative archetypal dynamics are most active at the beginning of treatment, when the client and therapist “agree” on the basic rules of therapy. Working outside the consciousness of both, the self (self) creates the conditions of treatment that provide the ground on which the client’s personal and archetypal problems become manifest and present themselves as a living reality within the treatment. Although this re-creation of the client’s archetypal field within the temenos is potentially redeeming, without an understanding of these dynamics, archetypal possession gains even greater power over the client’s life.

As we see how these archetypal dynamics manifest themselves as a living, breathing reality within the therapeutic container, we understand what prompted Teilhard de Chardin to write: “Matter is the spirit that moves slowly enough to be seen” and on Ervin Laszlo realizes that: “The field precedes the form.”

Mystics, sages and dreamers long to understand something about these emerging energies that move matter and life, and have carried us into fields as diverse as mysticism and science. D’Arcy Thompson, a renowned philosopher and scientist, assumed this search and writes: “The form of… matter and the changes in form… apparent in its movement… is due to the action of force… the form of an object a diagram of forces” (1947, p. 16).

The “forces” that drive these therapeutic, interactional dynamics are a portrait of the psyche movement and archetypes, which now create form within the therapeutic relationship. This opportunity to literally see the contours and functioning of archetypes in matter, as they manifest in these therapeutic dynamics, offers the promise of healing and liberation from the chains of such pain, and ultimately a deep experience of the numinous.

(1947, p. 16).