What does it mean to play in psychotherapy? And what does it mean to become, especially in adolescence? Two books that have shaped my clinical thinking in profound ways are D.W. Winnicott’s Playing and Reality and Richard Frankel’s The Adolescent Psyche. Though written in different contexts, both works invite us to reconsider how we understand psychological growth, creativity, and transformation. At their heart is a shared concern with something alive in the psyche: the space

Ithell Colquhoun’s work stands at the crossroads of art, magic, and social reform. Rooted in landscape, myth, and the living intelligence of matter, her paintings and writings speak powerfully to contemporary longings for depth, enchantment, and ecological relationship.

Fifty years after James Hillman published Re Visioning Psychology, his work remains vivid, challenging, and creatively alive. This article explores Hillman’s life, ideas, and contributions to archetypal psychology, with reflections on image, soul, dreams, imagination, and the deep ecological and cultural themes that shaped his vision.

What does it mean to listen to the Earth? Not as a metaphor, but as an act of reverent attention. For those whose work engages with psyche and image (particularly psychotherapists and artists in this instance) the question can evoke something ancestral, a realignment of the senses with our most natural way of being in the world. We are accustomed to listening deeply: to silences, the symbolic, to psyche speaking through image and metaphor. So what happens when we turn this sa

Patrick Harpur's The Philosopher's Secret Fire explores a forgotten understanding of imagination. Not fantasy or invention, but a living realm where myth, psyche, and world meet. This article reflects on imagination in psychotherapy, creative practice, and the imaginal dimension of reality.

There are certain books that feel less like something we simply read, and more like something we return to when a particular kind of understanding is needed. Martín Prechtel’s The Smell of Rain on Dust is one of those books. Its central insight is both simple and deeply challenging. That grief, in its fullest sense, cannot be separated from praise. If there is ever to be any real peace on earth, all people need to relearn and reestablish the now diminished and hidden arts of

The condition of this book tells a story, it has lived a life. A sign of its importance to me during the past decade, and no doubt beyond. In Crossing the Unknown Sea, David Whyte is drawing us towards a deeper and lasting shift in how we attend to our inner world of desires and dreams for a life well-lived, face the world and its demands, and truly engage in the conversational nature of reality. Pretending To Be Alive We may do the same work and do it well, but we may do it

There are certain ideas that seem to sit just beneath the surface of modern life, recognised in fragments, but rarely given their full significance. Imagination is one of them. In Lost Knowledge of the Imagination, Gary Lachman explores how imagination has been misunderstood, marginalised, and often reduced to something trivial or unreal within Western culture. What emerges instead is a very different picture. One in which imagination is not a secondary function of the mind,

There are certain books that feel less like something to be read from beginning to end, and more like something to return to, to open at any page and enter a particular world. Alchemy & Mysticism is one of those. I have returned to this Taschen volume many times. Each encounter offers something slightly different, not only in what is seen, but in how the images seem to work upon the imagination. The Opus as Image What strikes me most in these pages is that even where the mate

An exploration of material becoming living presence in the art object. Jungian analyst Warren Colman explores the formation of archetypes as derived from human engagement with their social and material environment. This is a phenomenological approach which sees psychic life as emergent from embodied action in the world, in contrast to a classical Jungian perspective which would view archetypes as pre-existent, either “inborn” biologically, or metaphysically a priori. As I und

If explanation is the self-cure for curiosity, we have a lot of explaining to stop doing; if desire is the refuge from wide-angled attention, we have a lot of wanting to relinquish. In Attention Seeking, Adam Phillips offers a way of thinking about attention that moves beyond the obvious. Attention is something we give and receive, and is in turns needed, wanted, and feared in its various forms. In psychotherapy, we notice that a symptom, or a state of mind, is something that

The work of James Hillman can feel both compelling and difficult to approach. His writing does not sit easily within conventional ideas of psychology, and often asks something different of the reader. Less a system to be understood, and more a way of seeing to be entered into. This copy of A Blue Fire has been with me for the best part of twenty years. It was one of the first ‘psychology’ books I owned, and it has lived a life. The cover is worn, the pages marked by time and

Carl Jung’s reflections from Bollingen reveal a psyche that is not confined to the individual but flows through nature, ancestry, and the deep roots of life. This expanded post explores Jung’s vision of the interconnectedness of self, soul, and the living world.

The First Encounter I discovered the work of Carl Jung during my mid-to-late teens, when I plucked this text from a shelf in a local bookshop. Having no idea at the time who this man was, or about psychoanalysis, I imagine I was attracted by the title. A Timely Passage in a Culture of Speed I find the following passage especially fascinating today, in a world where we are so often required to ‘know’ quickly. Alluding to a way of working that seeks not to impinge upon the...

Cecil Collins is an artist I have a great appreciation for. This book documents the thoughts and reflections of many of those who knew him, whether as a collector, curator, student of his unique teaching methods, or through other connections. Collins’ work carries a particular quality that is difficult to define, yet unmistakable when encountered. It speaks from a place that feels both ancient and immediate, personal and universal. Images arise from the fountainhead of human