Imagination, Nature
& the Inner Life
A wider context for understanding the place of imagination, meaning and the natural world within my therapeutic approach.
Psychotherapy does not take place in isolation from the wider ways in which we experience life. Our inner world is shaped not only by personal history and relationships, but by the images that move us, the places to which we feel drawn and the questions that give our lives direction.
This page explores some of the wider influences that inform how I listen and think within therapy. They are not methods that I apply to every client, but dimensions of experience that can be given serious attention when they matter within your life.
👉 For practical information about sessions, fees and how to begin, visit the Psychotherapy Welcome Page.
👉 You can also read more about the Therapeutic Process and Relationship.
Imagination as a way of knowing
Imagination is often treated as the opposite of reality, as though it belongs only to fantasy or invention. Within depth psychology, it can be understood more seriously: as one of the ways experience takes form and becomes available to us.
A dream, an image or a recurring memory may carry something that has not yet been fully understood. Imagination can also reveal how we experience the world, including what we fear, long for or sense might be possible.
This does not mean that every image contains a hidden message waiting to be decoded. We can remain curious about what appears without reducing it to a single explanation.
In therapy, imagination may enter through conversation or image-making. Our work may move between the two, depending on what feels most helpful and appropriate.
As a practising artist, I continue to explore the life of images within my own work. My art and psychotherapy remain distinct practices, but both are shaped by sustained attention to how images arise and how they affect us.
👉 You can read more about working with images on the Art Psychotherapy page.
Spirituality and questions of meaning
Questions of meaning may become especially important when familiar ways of living no longer feel sufficient. A person may begin to wonder what their life is organised around, what deserves their commitment or how they relate to something larger than themselves.
These questions may be understood through religious belief or spiritual experience. They may also arise through creativity, relationship or an encounter with the natural world.
I do not ask clients to adopt any particular belief or interpretation. Therapy can offer a place in which spiritual experience, doubt and questions about the nature of reality are approached seriously, without being imposed upon or automatically reduced to psychological explanation.
Meaning is not always something we can simply decide or manufacture. It may emerge gradually through greater attention to how we are living and to what continues to ask something of us.
Inner life and the wider world
Depth psychotherapy recognises that a person is more than a collection of symptoms or behaviours. Psychological life includes what is not immediately visible: the feelings that remain difficult to name, the images that return and the longings that shape us.
At the same time, inner life is not purely private. It develops within relationship and is affected by culture, place and the conditions in which we live.
My approach therefore attends to personal experience while remaining open to its wider context. What appears in therapy may belong to your individual history, but it may also connect with broader questions about how you want to live and what kind of relationship you wish to have with the world around you.
👉 You can read more about this orientation on the Depth Psychology page.
Some of the influences behind this approach
My approach has been shaped most deeply by the traditions of Jungian and archetypal psychology.
James Hillman has been a particularly important influence, especially in his understanding of soul, image and psyche as extending beyond the private interior of the individual. The work of C. G. Jung remains part of the wider foundation from which many of these ideas developed.
Robert Romanyshyn has also influenced how I think about the relationship between scholarship and soul, and about the importance of remaining answerable to image, story and what cannot be fully mastered through explanation. Other psychotherapeutic influences include D. W. Winnicott’s writing on play and the space in which experience becomes creative, alongside James Hollis’s sustained attention to meaning and the demands of the unlived life.
My thinking also draws from beyond psychotherapy. David Whyte’s writing on vocation and the inner conversation has been important, while Patrick Harpur’s work comes close to my own interest in imagination as something more than private fantasy. Visual artists, poets and writers concerned with landscape have also shaped how I understand image, place and the possibility that the world itself may address us.
These influences do not form a single theoretical system, and they do not carry equal weight within my work. They contribute to an orientation that takes psychological life seriously without assuming that everything meaningful can be reduced to individual psychology.
Taking the next step
You do not need to have a particular interest in imagination, nature or spirituality in order to begin therapy with me. These dimensions are available to be explored where they are relevant to your experience.
If you would like to consider whether we might work together, you are welcome to contact me to arrange an initial consultation. Please use the form below, or email me directly at APhillipsPsychotherapy@gmail.com
It is helpful to include a brief outline of what has led you to consider therapy and what you hope to explore or change. There is no need to include sensitive or highly personal details in your first message.
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I usually respond within 48 hours unless I am away from the practice.
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If you do not see my reply, please check your spam folder and contact me again if necessary.