Vilhelm Hammershøi

Car si l’on considère le psychisme comme un système d’énergie psychique, on peut considérer la peur de l’abandon comme un vent destructeur, un courant, une tempête qui fait tout flancher sur son passage, car elle préfère largement détruire par elle-même plutôt que de rester impuissante face à un autre abandon, à une autre confirmation que l’on est, indubitablement, irrémédiablement abandonnable.

Car la peur de l’abandon se manifeste, s’active, selon deux voies : la peur d’être laissé seul, et aussi ce que cela veut dire à propos de nous, notamment que l’on n’est pas aimable, que l’on est défectueux, pas assez bien pour ne pas être abandonné, pas assez bien pour être choisi et gardé.

Si l’on était autrement, plus beau, plus aimable, plus normal, plus confiant, c’est clair que nous ne serions pas abandonnés, ni abandonnables.

Il n’y a même aucun doute à avoir sur le sujet, point.

Il y a l’abandon, l’acte physique d’abandon. Et le sentiment d’abandon. Et les deux ne sont pas toujours au même rendez-vous. L’un peut exister sans que l’autre soit présent.

Le message principal de l’abandon est : tu n’es pas aimable. Ta personne, ton essence, tu n’es pas quelqu’un que l’on peut aimer.

Tel un ouragan sombre, ténébreux, cette croyance va essayer de tout pourrir et ravager sur son passage, tout pourrir à l’intérieur de l’abandonné. Cette croyance est à la racine des autres expressions de l’abandon.

À partir du moment où l’on a manqué d’amour inconditionnel, surtout de manière soutenue et régulière, cela induit l’enfant à se dévaloriser, à comprendre et à retenir qu’il n’était pas assez pour obtenir cet amour inconditionnel, un dû naturel qui fait partie de notre espèce.

Si l’on m’a quitté, ignoré, négligé, c’est forcément parce que quelque chose en moi ne méritait pas d’être aimé.

Et, sournoisement, discrètement, et lentement surtout, c’est là que l’abandon rentre en nous : cela modifie la manière dont on se perçoit.
Ça nous met déjà en dehors du cercle des gens normaux, à part de la bonne gent.

L’acte d’abandon extérieur laisse sa marque, et, ensuite, s’installe en conviction intérieure.

Et l’individu, le plus souvent inconsciemment, commence dès lors à se ballotter avec les nouvelles pousses de cette croyance souveraine et autonome : je ne suis pas suffisamment important. Je suis trop difficile à aimer. Quelque chose en moi fait partir les autres...

Et ces petits bourgeons se développent, à notre insu.

Ils deviennent méconnaissables, d’ailleurs.

Vingt ans plus tard, ils prennent désormais la forme du besoin d’être rassuré tout le temps, de surinterpréter la distance d’autrui, de ne pas croire durablement à l’amour que l’on reçoit.

Prenons Célia par exemple. Sa mère était dépressive et peu disponible émotionnellement pendant son enfance, tandis que son père partait environ deux semaines par mois travailler à l’étranger. Aînée de trois enfants, Célia a aussi dû beaucoup aider avec ses deux petits frères. Elle a appris très tôt à se débrouiller, à ne pas trop demander, à aider plutôt qu’à avoir besoin, car elle voyait que sa maman était malade et faisait de son mieux.

Célia ne s’est jamais considérée comme abandonnée. Pendant longtemps, d’ailleurs, le mot lui semblait beaucoup trop fort, trop dur envers ses parents. Ses parents étaient là, après tout ; ils l’aimaient, elle n’avait pas été abandonnée physiquement. Et pourtant, elle avait été profondément seule avec certaines de ses expériences émotionnelles, avec son harcèlement qu’elle n’a jamais révélé à ses parents afin de ne pas ajouter davantage à leurs soucis.

Aujourd’hui, Célia est extrêmement indépendante. Elle demande peu aux autres mais donne énormément. Elle aide, anticipe, prend en charge.

Elle remarque immédiatement les changements d’humeur chez les autres, une distance, un changement de ton, un message plus froid que d’habitude.

Ce radar lui a certainement été utile lorsqu’elle était enfant avec une mère dépressive, mais aujourd’hui il continue de fonctionner même lorsqu’il n’y a peut-être rien à détecter. Et d’ailleurs, les quelques partenaires qu’elle a eus lui ont tous dit qu’elle essayait trop de les materner, de les contrôler.

Dans ses relations, Célia a aussi besoin d’être rassurée, mais elle déteste avoir besoin de l’être.

Elle peut surinterpréter la distance, se demander ce qu’elle a fait, si l’autre l’aime toujours, s’il est en train de se détacher, et donc elle ramène son partenaire à elle, tout le temps. La moindre distance l’envoie en panique intérieure.

Elle supporte aussi beaucoup trop avant de dire que quelque chose ne lui convient pas. Elle comprend les autres, trouve des explications à leurs comportements, minimise ses propres besoins. Elle peut dire oui lorsqu’elle voudrait dire non et ressentir énormément de culpabilité lorsqu’elle déçoit quelqu’un ou pose une limite.

Et puis Célia a appris à être utile. Être celle qui aide, qui tient, qui ne demande pas trop.

Peut-être qu’à un moment donné, être nécessaire s’est même un peu confondu avec être aimée.
Alors elle fait beaucoup, donne beaucoup, travaille beaucoup. Quelque part, elle cherche encore à garantir sa place.

Elle a aussi beaucoup de mal à croire durablement à l’amour qu’elle reçoit. On peut l’aimer aujourd’hui, mais cela ne garantit jamais complètement qu’on l’aimera demain. Un conflit peut rapidement devenir une menace pour la relation entière. Une distance peut devenir le début d’un départ.

Et rien de tout cela, en apparence, ne ressemble vraiment à l’abandon. Cela ressemble à de l’anxiété, du perfectionnisme, de l’hyperindépendance, une difficulté à poser des limites, une tendance à trop donner, à trop réfléchir.

Les petits bourgeons sont devenus méconnaissables.

L’abandon extérieur de Célia n’existe plus depuis longtemps, mais certaines de ses ramifications continuent désormais à vivre en elle.

Elle s’abandonne afin d’éviter d’être abandonnée ou d’être mise à l’écart.

L’abandon ne reste donc pas uniquement un événement qui nous est arrivé, dans le passé, avec une personne en particulier.

Il rentre en nous et peut continuer à vivre longtemps après que l’abandon extérieur a pris fin.

On retrouve cet abandon dans la manière dont on se voit, dans ce que l’on pense mériter, dans notre manière d’interpréter les comportements des autres, de vivre leur distance, mais aussi dans tout ce que l’on met en place pour essayer de ne plus jamais être abandonné.

Et c’est là que quelque chose d’assez terrible peut se produire : à force de vouloir éviter un autre abandon, on commence à s’abandonner soi-même.

On tait un besoin pour que l’autre reste. On accepte quelque chose qui nous fait mal. On devient ce que l’on pense devoir être pour être aimé. On se quitte un petit peu, puis encore un petit peu, sans forcément s’en rendre compte.

L’abandon qui venait autrefois de l’extérieur a trouvé une manière de continuer à l’intérieur.

Alors. Quelle est la clé pour déloger cet abandon de soi semi-permanent ? La présence à soi.

** Celia est un personnage fictif créé uniquement à des fins d’illustration. Toute ressemblance avec des personnes réelles, vivantes ou décédées, ou avec leurs expériences est entièrement fortuite.

Separation, Edvard Munch, 1896

If we think of the psyche as a system of psychic energy, we might imagine the fear of abandonment as a destructive wind, a current, a storm that destabilizes everything in its path. It would much rather destroy something itself than remain powerless in the face of another abandonment, another confirmation that we are, undoubtedly and perhaps irreparably, someone who can be abandoned.
Someone abandonable at the core.

Because the fear of abandonment operates along two paths: there is the fear of being left alone, of course, but there is also what being left seems to say about us. That we are unlovable, defective, not good enough to be chosen and, especially, not good enough to be kept.

If we were different - more beautiful, more lovable, more normal, more confident - then surely we wouldn’t be abandoned. We wouldn’t be the kind of person people abandon. There is almost no question about it in our mind. Period.

There is abandonment, the actual act of being abandoned. And then there is the feeling of abandonment. The two do not always occur together. One can exist without the other.

The central message left by abandonment is: you are unlovable. Something about you, about who you are, makes you someone who cannot be loved.

And this belief can begin to rot and ravage everything in its path, to rot things from within the abandoned person. It often sits at the root of the other expressions of abandonment.

When unconditional love has been missing, especially in a sustained or repeated way, the child can begin to devalue themselves, to understand and retain that somehow they were not enough to receive this unconditional love, something we are naturally supposed to receive as human beings.

“If I was left, ignored, neglected, then surely something in me was not worthy of being loved,” the child begins to think to make sense of the senseless withdrawal of parental attention, nourishment, love.

And insidiously, slowly, silently, this is how abandonment enters us: it changes the way we see ourselves.

It casts us outside the circle of normal people, apart from the good people.

The external act of abandonment leaves its mark and gradually becomes an internal conviction.

And then, most often without realizing it, the person begins to carry around the new shoots growing from this sovereign, autonomous belief: I am not important enough. I am too difficult to love. Something about me makes people leave.

And these little buds develop without us even noticing. Eventually, they become almost unrecognizable.

Twenty years later, they might look like needing constant reassurance, reading too much into someone else’s distance, being unable to really trust the love we receive.

And so we begin compensating for all of this.

Take Celia, for example.

Her mother was depressed and emotionally unavailable throughout much of her childhood, while her father traveled abroad for work for about two weeks every month. As the oldest of three children, Celia also had to help a lot with her two younger brothers. She learned very early to manage on her own, not to ask for too much, to help rather than need, because she could see that her mother was unwell and was doing the best she could.

Celia never thought of herself as having been abandoned. Of course NOT!

For a long time, in fact, the word seemed much too strong, even unfair and cruel to her parents. Her parents were there, after all.
They loved her. She had not been physically abandoned. And yet she had been deeply alone with some of her emotional experiences, including the bullying she never told her parents about because she didn’t want to add even more to what they were already dealing with.

Today, Celia is extremely independent. She asks very little of others but gives enormously. She helps, anticipates, takes things on.

She immediately notices changes in other people’s moods, a little distance, a change in tone, a message that feels colder than usual.

This radar was certainly useful when she was growing up with a depressed mother, but today it keeps working even when there may be nothing there to detect.
In fact, the few partners she has had have all told her that she tries too much to mother them, to control them.

In relationships, Celia also needs reassurance, but she hates needing it. She judges herself for it, and tries to nip it.
She can read too much into distance, wonder what she did for hours at end, whether the other person still loves her, whether he is beginning to pull away, and so she keeps trying to pull her partner back toward her. The slightest distance can send her into an internal panic. She has forgiven betrayal, cheating. As long as they do not leave her, she will accept it.

She tolerates far too much before saying that something doesn’t work for her.
She understands other people, finds explanations for their behavior, minimizes her own needs. She can say yes when she wants to say no, and feel enormous guilt when she disappoints someone or sets a boundary, which she often takes back.

And Celia learned to be useful. To be the one who helps, who holds things together, who doesn’t ask for too much.

Maybe at some point being needed became a little confused with being loved.

So she does a lot, gives a lot, works a lot. Somewhere in there, she is still trying to secure her place, to guarantee that she will be kept for her usefulness.

She also has a very hard time trusting that the love she receives will last.
Someone may love her today, but that never entirely guarantees that they will love her tomorrow.

A conflict can quickly feel like a threat to the whole relationship. A little distance can feel like the beginning of someone leaving.

And none of this, on the surface, necessarily looks like abandonment. It looks like anxiety, perfectionism, hyper-independence, difficulty setting boundaries, giving too much, thinking too much.

The little buds of her emotional neglect she experienced as a little girl have become unrecognizable. Celia’s external abandonment ended a long time ago, but some of its ramifications continue to live inside her. She abandons herself in order to avoid being abandoned or left out.

Abandonment, then, doesn’t remain only an event that happened to us in the past, with one particular person.
It enters us and can continue to live long after the external abandonment has ended.

We encounter it in the way we see ourselves, in what we believe we deserve, in the way we interpret other people’s behavior and experience their distance, but also in everything we put in place to make sure we are never abandoned again.

And this is where something quite terrible can happen: in trying so hard to avoid another abandonment, we begin to abandon ourselves.
We silence a need so that someone will stay. We accept something that harms us.
We become what we think we need to be in order to be loved.
We leave ourselves a little bit, then a little bit more, without necessarily realizing it. Then, we forget who we truly are, after having left ourselves miles and years ago.

The abandonment that once came from the outside has found a way to continue on the inside.

*If you would like to explore the psychology of abandonment more deeply, I will be teaching an eight-session Abandonment Intensive this fall, structured as a reading circle around Susan Anderson’s The Journey from Abandonment to Healing.

Over the course of eight sessions, we will read and think through the different stages of abandonment together: the initial shattering, withdrawal, the internalization of rejection, rage, and eventually the slow movement toward restoration and new connection. We will pay particular attention to what abandonment does to the psyche, and to the ways external abandonment can gradually become self-abandonment.

This is a psychoeducational reading circle rather than therapy, and no previous knowledge of psychology is required.

You can find additional information here: https://www.womenofdepthpsychology.com/abandonmentreadingcircle

** Celia is a fictional character created solely for illustrative purposes. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or deceased, or to their experiences is entirely coincidental.

What hurts us or our relationships often began as a form of protection for us.

Therapy helps us recognize what aspects of the hurt us so that the past stops controlling the present.

Deciding to start therapy a can be a very brave link in a chain of psychic suffering, and it is important to be deliberate and intentional, as the inner life is one of the most precious assets we have as human beings. Hence, it deserves utmost attention and care. At times, the support our closest social circle provides may not enough to address major challenges, leading us to seek professional support through therapy to navigate both everyday difficulties or more severe mental health conditions.

The indications for undertaking psychotherapy are most often: anxiety disorders, phobias, obsessive disorders, mood disorders (depression, emotional lability), certain addictions and behavioral disorders (impulsivity, inhibition), post-traumatic disorders. The first consultation is an assessment for both you and the therapist. The therapist seeks to understand the broad outlines of what brings you to therapy to understand if they can help you and if your current challenges fall within their professional scope. The initial consultation is also for you to gauge whether you could feel comfortable revealing your inner life to that particular therapist. And, depending on your potential experience with therapy, choose a different approach.

It’s important to note that a good therapist is not only someone who is kind, who understands you, who validates every word you utter. It is also someone with whom you can be wholly comfortable showing all of your facets. Techniques can be learned. Interventions can also be learned. So can theories. What is much harder to acquire is a way of thinking about the psyche and psychological suffering.

Here are some helpful questions to ask a potential therapist when you are looking for a new one:

How do you work in session? What does a session with you look like in general?

It is important to listen for more than a list of techniques. Does their description suggest a space where you are helped to think, or told how to think? Is it a framework that aims to replace your thinking with theirs? Is there a frame at all? Does the question feel impossible for them to answer?

How would you define a successful outcome in therapy?

This question can reveal how the therapist sees psychological change. Some therapists define outcome success primarily in terms of symptom reduction or improved daily functioning. And some therapists see therapy as an opportunity for a deeper transformation: helping a person understand the unconscious patterns that shape them, reorganize longstanding ways of being and relating, and gradually become more fully themselves.

Neither approach is inherently right or wrong, but it’s important to know whether the therapist’s vision of psychic aligns with your vision and what you need at your current life stage.

What is your stance in the room - is it more directive or receptive?

Every therapist has a preferred clinical posture. Some have a more directive style, offering frequent guidance, interpretations, or strategies. Some are more receptive, allowing your inner process to unfold with minimal interference. Neither approach is inherently better. What matters is the therapist’s capacity to adjust their position according to the needs of the person sitting in front of them. If therapy is overly directive, your own psychological process may be overshadowed, or it might rehearse a similar parental posture that harmed you in childhood. If it is too passive, you may be left alone with emotional material that requires containment, reflection, and careful integration.
A skilled therapist knows when to lead, when to follow, and when simply to remain present.

How do you see the challenges I’m talking about?

Do they respond with genuine curiosity and a formulation that feels specific to you, or whether their explanation sounds generic, rehearsed, or neatly fitted into a clerical box.
A thoughtful therapist should help you feel that they are trying to understand the unique organization of your inner world and your unique biography - not simply assigning you to a diagnostic category or applying a one-size-fits-all explanation.

In your view, what most often prevents therapy from being effective?

Do they recognize that obstacles to therapy are often more complex than a lack of motivation or effort (or lack of will power, which I have heard before, alas)?
Do they speak about the therapeutic relationship, unconscious patterns, defenses, resistance, trust, readiness for change, or the pace at which the psyche allows transformation to unfold?
This question can give you a sense of how deeply they view the complexity of psychological change - and how prepared they are to stay with you when the work inevitably becomes difficult, which it is bound to be.

How do you know when to go deeper in the work - and when to slow down?

Do they speak about attuning to the unique person sitting on the couch rather than following a textbook, scripted agenda? A thoughtful therapist will acknowledge that meaningful psychological change depends not only on what is being explored, but also when it is explored, knowing if or when a client is ready to face something the therapist is already aware of.

Can they approach emotionally charged material without overwhelming the psyche? Can they modulate the pace or do they seem they themselves might be overwhelmed with potent, emotionally charged material? Do they know when to pause, provide containment, and allow an experience to unfold at its own pace?

Their answer can show whether they appreciate the very delicate balance between challenge and safety. Therapy that moves too quickly may overwhelm the person’s capacity and even cause harm. Therapy that never ventures beneath the surface may leave the deepest patterns untouched, and thus inhibiting psychological change.

A skilled therapist knows how to recognize when the client’s psyche is ready to go further and deeper, and when it needs to slow down the process if more somatic regulation is needed before exploring the next defense mechanism for example.

Doing an internal audit after the initial session may also prove helpful.

After the initial meeting, it is recommended to notice your own internal response and state: what is happening within you, on the level of emotions and on the level of your nervous system. Do you feel some relief as a result of being genuinely heard and seen with empathy? Or do you leave feeling smaller, more guarded, defensive as though you had to change yourself to be understood and accepted? Of course, your first impression is not the whole story - our own histories unavoidably shape how we experience new relationships - but neither should it be ignored.

It’s important to note that “rightness of fit” is not solely about immediate comfort and a therapist’s likeability. Yes, friendliness is important and may be an extension of empathy, and it does not always mean clinical competence.

Can the presence, listening and empathy of the therapist allow you to bring all of yourself: your parts, your fears, your wounds, your complexity, and the full depths of your longings without having to fragment or hold anything back?

And if you don’t “feel” it during this first interview, don’t hesitate to consult another therapist.

Good therapy ultimately helps the "I" reclaim its place at the center of your present, rather than leaving your life in the hands of unresolved forces of your past.

As I arrived in New York and got settled in my old neighborhood, I noticed a few internal movements that caught my attention.

I lived in NY for over 15 years. Before that, France had always been my home. Yet whenever I return to France, I do not experience the same sense of home. Thus, I started asking myself: what is “home” from a depth-psychological perspective? Is it our native hometown? Is it the house we grew up in? Or is it a more multi-faceted human experience we carry with us?

The meaning of “home” from a depth psychological perspective is what we are going to explore.

We utter the expression, casually so, nearly every day of our lives. Do we stop to unpack its subjective meaning and its symbolism?

I am going home.

I am looking for a house.

I do not feel at home here.

But what exactly are we talking about? For it is possible to own a house without ever truly feeling at home in it. Or to return to our hometown and not find the “at home” feeling one would expect?

Likewise, it is also possible for an unknown place, or a community, to provide us with that strange impression: I know this place, even though I have never lived there. I feel at home here, as if the feeling of being at home sometimes precedes the place itself. Our whole being recognizes it as “homey”.

I, for one, rarely paid attention to the way I was in a given place. Do we pay attention to the way our inner body responds to a given place? Whether the body softens or hardens in dread and tension, whether every bone can relax into being or remain in vigilant tension, where we least have to contort ourselves into shapes and expressions expected by the external environment.

The image of a snail reared into my mind over the weekend, a snail carrying its home wherever it goes.

Is it the same for us? Do we carry our abode wherever we go, carrying our inner home and placing it within four walls, like snails?

Across time and cultures, philosophers, psychoanalysts, writers have approached this question in their own ways and writings. Gaston Bachelard, a 20th-century French philosopher, wrote that the house is our own corner of the world. In The Poetics of Space, he touches on the “chez-soi” - a space that allows for the shoring of the self, rendering it less vulnerable by protecting it from outside elements and threats. He states that home is “the house of our own corner of the world”, “our first universe”, “a big cradle”.

What fascinates him is the way a house becomes a vessel for our inner life, our past relationships, and our memories. The attic that holds boxes of childhood stories and images. Walls that heard arguments, decisions of divorce, and dreams materializing. Bachelard posits that we are always adding meaning and value to the spaces we inhabit, which become our own through our subjectivity.

Philosopher Martin Heidegger shifts the question again.

For him, the real issue is not the house itself. It is rather the issue of “dwelling”. This led me to wonder whether we slow down enough to observe how we dwell in our own selves in different places.

Which adaptations are put in place in certain places?

When we return to our parental home or hometown...do old mechanisms return faster than the speed of light? Are we aware of defense mechanisms that activate again in certain places, tugging on the tender wounds of our younger self?

How do we dwell in a given place? Our nervous system shifts gears without our notice, tiny spikes of anxiety rearing in the background when we arrive somewhere, around specific people, but because we have been trained to exclusively focus outwardly, we pay little to no attention to the background movement of our psyche and nervous system, unless, of course, they sound the alarm of panic attacks and acute anxiety.

Perhaps we accumulate furniture, pictures, objects to form that sense of home in a dwelling, without ever fully attaining it. That feeling of exile may resist our own attempts at forcing a sensation of “home”, but the sensation of being a stranger or strange in a non-home place remains.

Of course, I could not consider this question without Jung and Bollingen, a tower he built with his own hands. “What if architecture could embody the journey of the soul?”, asks Lucy Huskinson in the foreword of a new book on Bollingen: The Bollingen Tower: Constructing a Jungian Sense of Place (2026), written by architect and author Martin Gledhill.

In his book, Gledhill conceptualizes Bollingen as a “psychic place” in his latest book (Gledhill, 2026), where “Jung was as much occupied by the Tower as he occupied it.” Jung described the Tower as a place where he “was most deeply mostly himself” (Jung, 1989).

Jung drew his vision for Bollingen tower and submitted it to 18-year-old architect apprentice Walter Niehus (who would later marry Jung’s daughter, Marianne), and on weekends, Jung, Franz, and Walter would go up to Bollingen to participate in the construction of the Tower, starting in 1923. The Tower was completed in 1956, becoming a “womb in which he was reborn in stone” (Jung, 1989).

Later on, Barbara Hannah mentioned that visitors of Bollingen felt compelled to occupy the atmosphere of Jung’s personality number two, referring to the atmosphere of Bollingen that would pull Jung into his second personality (Hannah, 1976).

Is home an architectural expression of our unique psyche? A place where our core authentic self can lay down defenses and be free from the external constraints that strangle it or keep it restricted. It seems that, in the case of Carl Jung, his Kusnacht home and his Bollingen towers hosted his two personalities: Kusnacht was home to his conventional, family-man self, and Bollingen hosted his second personality.

Home is less a place than the way one inhabits a place, and this way of living depends largely on our inner world, our personal history, and our personality.

For example, take three people entering the same space.

The first, deeply anxious, spends her time monitoring possible dangers. She cannot lower her guard, has a difficult time sleeping, and dread overwhelms her for reasons unbeknownst to her.

The second constantly seeks to please the other occupants and seems more unfazed by the actual space.

The third person feels safe enough to be spontaneous, creative, silent when she wants to be, and close when she wants to be.

Objectively, they are present in the same house, but psychologically speaking, they do not inhabit the space the same way.

I also think that home begs for a certain reciprocity between the external place and our psyche, and perhaps even the place where a major portion of our Individuation has taken place. The place became the soil for our Individuation, with its social/emotional/cultural imprints becoming part of our identity.

For me, New York feels home because it participated in the person I became. The pulse of the city, its intellectual life, its diversity, its tolerance for complexity and embrace of it, its permission and push to be anonymous and authentic at the same time - all of these became woven into my own psyche. Returning always feels like my nervous system remembering a way of being that is deeply familiar and congruent with who I am today. New York reared and raised me.

And that opens up an idea that I find fascinating: maybe we don’t just choose where we live. Some places also choose us. As I peruse through the stone buildings of Stone Barns, an agricultural non-profit farm 30 miles North of New York City, the large stones radiate a warmth that takes me back to my native France. Something in me recognizes the symbolic power of stone, repositories of history. Stones convey a feeling of permanence. They endure and weather and shelter. Stones outstay generations, history. I grew up in Normandy, where I was surrounded by centuries-old stone houses, cathedrals, castles, farmhouses. I unconsciously associated stone with robustness and rootedness. Stone is yet another symbolic signal of home.

An ephemeral conclusion I will pause on for now is this: Home is the place where the Self can finally stop spending its energy on survival and begin to exist.

Home is the place where we no longer need to adapt at the expense of ourselves, the place where different parts of ourselves can relax into being, into place, without fear of reprimand or rejection. More than a simple physical building, home is a psychic and physical space where the various dimensions can coexist, be heard, seen, contemplated, and fully embraced.

“Home” is more than a place where one can be themselves. It’s a place where everything that is authentically us is allowed to exist, without having to fragment to belong.

Where do you feel your self can breathe?

References

Gledhill, Martin. Bollingen Tower: Constructing a Jungian Sense of Place. Routledge, 2026.

Hannah, Barbara. Jung: His Life and Work. A Biographical Memoir. GP Putnam’s Sons, 1976.

Jung, C. G., et al. Memories, Dreams, Reflections. Vintage Books, 1989.

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In her book Heartbreak, Dr. Ginette Paris explores how insights from neurobiology and depth psychology can help guide recovery from heartbreak, emphasizing heartbreak as a gateway to personal transformation.

Dr. Paris describes heartbreak as a doorway to Individuation, provided we recognize the process for what it is.

To concretize that the journey from heartbreak to Individuation, she mentions several ideas that can support the transmutation of senseless suffering often associated with heartbreak.

Here are the main ideas she proposes.

Heartbreak often brings the unconscious and its hidden feelings to the surface, sometimes as physical discomfort. When we are less aware, our body’s alarm system will discomfort or illness to draw our attention. Ultimately, the body often holds onto what the mind tries to ignore, Dr. Paris says. Basically, the brain will keep translating psychic pain into somatic symptoms to get our attention back to the emotional source and deal with the conflict at the level of cause.

Beyond the physical manifestations, Dr. Paris gets into the inherent conflictual nature of love: a battle between desire and the need for freedom. She states that neurosis often taints relationships and leads to breakups – neurosis is an inevitable part of love because our desire for love directly clashes with our need for freedom.

Because the desire for connection can threaten our basic need for personal freedom, love is automatically bound to fear. We fear losing ourselves in the attachment, yet we fear being abandoned if we claim our independence.

Paradoxically, a breakup can lead to Individuation and psychological growth when we utilize the experience to let go of the addictive, neurotic parts of love.

If we stay with our pain and tolerate it, it can push our brain to reorganize new synaptic connections. Abandonment is one of the most terrifying psycho-emotional experiences one can have. When we feel abandoned, it sends an urgent signal to the brain. The sudden loss feels like a drug being taken away, which can cause panic.

Dr. Paris also makes an interesting point: the human brain does not distinguish between a lack of love, food, or sleep. All of these feel like equal threats to it.

A breakup can send the brain into a state of limbic panic, akin to a drug withdrawal. While grief counseling and therapy can help calm limbic panic, they may also keep us focused on our pain. This can lead to more complaining, longing for the past, and a sense of being stuck in a cycle without real healing progress.

She suggests that the brain needs to move up the evolution ladder of our mammalian brain into the realm of symbols and metaphors, as she mentions, “telling the facts is not enough, but finding the images and metaphors for your situation will force an opening of your imagination, which itself, pushes you “beyond the whining pup.”

The left side of our brain wants more than just explanations. It also needs images and stories, as American neuroscientist Michael Gazzaniga found when he started the field of cognitive neuroscience in 1980. He called this the brain’s “interpreter mechanism” and described it as the “creative, narrative talent of the left hemisphere.” This need for stories is what depth psychologists and therapists try to meet through metaphors and symbols. Forcing the brain to find an image for the situation generates new synaptic connections, effectively helping the neural pathways restructure themselves around a new understanding of the self.

After studying the psyche from both neurobiological and depth-psychological perspectives, Dr. Paris believes that the best way to heal heartbreak is through Individuation, not just by restoring a sense of attachment to someone else. But how does this process work?

Heartbreak can help us reach a new level of awareness. As we go through this process again, we learn to pull back our projections and notice our conflicting feelings. This also helps us move away from emotional pain by encouraging the brain to form new connections, especially when we use language from the right hemisphere about it, to meditate on the image of the wound, feel it in the body, and retrieve psychic gold and insights via the practice of Active Imagination.

Telling your heartbreak story is what will ultimately “dress your wound” and help you move past the emotional pain that follows a breakup.

Employing those parts of your brain pulls you out from the disorientation that accompanies heartbreak, the sense of drifting along the shores of the unknown, of a new future you had not envisioned. By dressing your wound with the retrieval of images, of mythological resemblance and narrative, of artmaking, of rewriting the narrative, you engage your own Individuation muscles and liberate psychic energy from being tangled with the one who left or left you.

It provides you with a map when you may be lost on the continent of hopelessness and profound despair.

Dr. Ginette Paris, Ginette Paris Ph.D. is Professor Emerita at Pacifica Graduate Institute, in Santa Barbara, California. She teaches and lectures in US, Canada and Europe.

Book reference: Paris, Ginette. Heartbreak: New Approaches to Healing: Recovering from Lost Love and Mourning. Mill City Press, 2011.

Women drawn to the unconscious, to depth psychology, are rarely casual visitors.

Most have already been working on themselves for some time. They’ve tried self-care practices, affirmations, body-based approaches, DBT skills, cognitive reframing. Often, they’ve also been in good, meaningful therapy.

They usually know their emotional landscape better than they once did. They can regulate themselves more effectively, at least on the surface. They tend to be thoughtful, introspective. And yet, something still doesn’t hold.

And yet, the same patterns return.

The same fractures in internal authority reappear. A single critical remark can still cause the self to collapse inward. Old adolescent loops of self-doubt are reactivated. What took years to build can feel undone in a moment. It may take days, weeks, or months to recover a previously stable sense of confidence—climbing back up from familiar descents into self-blame, self-deprecation, and the haunting belief of “never good enough, no matter how much work I do.”

Does this mean therapy failed?
Not necessarily.

More often, it signals that the internal structure of the self was never explicitly addressed or rebuilt. Skills were acquired. Insight was gained. Regulation improved. But the psychic architecture that could hold authority, withstand external impact, and sustain continuity of self was never intentionally constructed.

It is possible that they were never exposed to the concept of the self as a psychological structure and real concept. They may have unknowingly circled around it many times—through work on self-esteem, self-image, confidence, or empowerment—both in and outside of therapy, without ever explicitly encountering it or recognizing it as something that exists within them, something that can be developed, strengthened, and relied upon.

When the self has not been named, addressed, and intentionally rebuilt, the work remains indirect.

Sure, insight accumulates.

Skills improve.

Awareness deepens.

Yet the core structure that could organize experience and sustain continuity under pressure remains fragile, uncertain.

When we begin rebuilding the self, something starts shifting at a structural level. On the level that can support and sustain long-term psychological transformation.

It provides the psychic “arm strength” necessary to set boundaries, to speak for one’s needs and desires, and to protect one’s physical and psychological integrity. Authority no longer has to be borrowed from the outside or defended through effort; it becomes anchored internally, rebuilding a psychic backbone.

Without this internal scaffolding, external or surface-level practices cannot endure. They may offer temporary relief, moments of regulation, or brief restorations of confidence—but they function as bandages that are too small for a deeper, more expansive wound. What is required is not another technique, but a structure capable of holding the self together when it is tested.

That is where depth work truly begins.

A woman comes in to therapy who has built what many would call a business empire. She employs dozens of people, makes complex decisions daily, and carries significant responsibility without visible difficulties. Somehow, a single piece of feedback from an employee can churn her for days. She reports spirals of self-questioning, nights without sleep, waves of anger followed by urgent self-justification.

What is striking clinically is not the intensity of the reaction, but its disproportion. The professional self remains intact, competent, admired. It is the internal authority that collapses. As a child and adolescent, she brought her schoolwork, her essays, her early projects to her father. He expected perfection. Nothing could exceed the frame, not the slightest error, rien ne pouvait dépasser. Approval was conditional, exacting, and silent when standards were not met. What organized her psychic life was not the development of authority, but the anticipation of judgment. Decades later, the structure still holds: external success is undeniable, but the self remains organized around an internal tribunal that no amount of achievement can appease.

Her sense of self became organization around external evaluation, sensitive to any mishap that would compromise acceptance.

What emerged clinically is a self organized not around stable internal authority, but around a permanent orientation toward external judgment, in which legitimacy is conditional and endlessly revocable.

An orientation that was once useful, but now the cause of intense anxiety.

In recent times, I have observed with concern the increased use of artificial intelligence to replace good psychotherapy. People are increasingly turning to AI for support and the convenient listening ear, reassurance, or advice on boundaries.

This trend highlights the need for clarity about AI’s appropriate role in mental health support, what it can do and what it cannot do. While that trend is understandable given the societal pressures and high cost of therapy, relying on AI has clinical and human limitations. Therefore, it is essential for mental health professionals to clarify both the capacities and limitations of AI in the context of mental health.

First, while artificial intelligence can mimic the language of care and compassion, it cannot embody the human, psychic presence that heals. AI offers simulated, algorithmic responses - only humans can provide genuine presence.

For several reasons.

A psychotherapist or psychoanalyst offers more than just words; they offer their internal space, a gaze, containment, and symbolic representation. It is within the bounds of the therapeutic relationship that psychic transformation occurs—not in the accuracy of an intellectual answer, but in the invisible work of transference, speech, silence, and emotional resonance and containment.

Second, no matter how sophisticated it is, AI lacks an unconscious.

It cannot dream, desire, or project - AI is only algorithms and probability.

In contrast, humans have rich unconscious lives, allowing them to sense the dynamics in another’s inner world, a skill refined by proper education and training.

AI cannot interpret your slips of the tongue, nor grasp the emotional charge behind a word you spoke too quickly or too softly. It cannot contain distress with you because it has no nervous system, nor can it survive transference hatred, nor endure emptiness without filling it.

Yet it is precisely in these fragile and ambiguous human spaces that psychological healing occurs.

Another crucial component of effective therapeutic work is the awareness and the learned containment of affect.

These days, there’s a lot of talk about AI “empathy machines.” They’re credited with the ability to understand, listen, and even console individuals. Sure.

But it’s essential to remember one simple thing: artificial intelligence feels nothing. It has no somatic holding or containing function: it has no body, no nervous system, no unconscious, and no emotional history.

It doesn’t know fear, shame, guilt, or tenderness. It can recognize language patterns associated with these emotions, but it can never experience them.

Where a human being intuitively senses another’s emotion—a sudden tremor in the voice, a heavy silence, a word that escapes - AI merely processes data and estimates a probability.

But, in all therapeutic work, it’s not intellectual understanding alone that heals, but emotional presence that supports the internalization of containment and regulation.

It is the encounter of two minds and two bodies that creates a living field: one welcomes, contains, and transforms the other’s emotion.

The illusion of “artificial empathy” is dangerous: it makes the subject believe they are understood, when in reality they have only been statistically modeled.

True listening requires a being capable of being affected—of feeling, of doubting, of hurting, of surviving the projection of the other.

It is the emotional field of our shared humanity that heals.

AI, however, can only respond – it cannot feel WITH.

According to Bion, the important “container-contained” dynamic depends on the analyst’s capacity to absorb raw affect and transform it into thinkable experience. AI, without a body or affectivity, cannot contain — it can only respond. It offers words, but no psychic metabolization whatsoever.

AI cannot perform the function of containing emotions because it feels and contains nothing. It returns very accurate words and even points out our defense mechanisms, but the reflections remain devoid of emotional experience.

AI cannot dream, nor associate freely, nor tolerate nonsense, nor interpret. And yet, it is precisely in these areas of incoherence, silence, and turmoil that psychological alchemy also takes place.

I am not saying that these technologies are useless. They can serve as supplementary information, educational support, or a tool for reflection between sessions.

But they can never replace the neurobiological complexity of therapeutic work—the face-to-face encounter between two unconscious spaces, two internal worlds of feelings and emotions, where the wounds in the bond are repaired and the vital functions of the self are restored.

If you are suffering, if you are experiencing anxiety, loss, or a painful repetition, don’t only confide in a machine. Seek out a human being capable of hearing you.

Mental health and its healthy transformation and maintenance are woven from and within human connection, not from algorithms.

AI is not inherently dangerous; the real danger arises only when it stands in for the irreplaceable healing that comes from human-to-human connection. If we value the human psyche, we must not relinquish it to algorithms but preserve the sanctity of genuine human engagement and presence.

Sylvie doesn’t want to lose herself anymore. After years of the same romantic patterns and the same downfalls, she is committed to working on her father wounds, and for the first time perhaps in her entire life, she does not feel the desperate need to jump back into a relationship after her last breakup last year. Perhaps her work in psychoanalytic therapy is finally paying off.

She is intrigued by Max, but she is also deeply aware of the old pull from her father’s wound. She knows that even though this wound has healed over and she recognizes its effects, it will always remain a part of her.

There is a warmth radiating from Max, an inviting gravity in his gaze, and a slightly firm tone of voice that captures Sylvie’s attention. She can feel her heart reacting, quickening without her permission. It’s a familiar sensation, reminiscent of moments when self-assured, confident men would stand before her, much like her Polish father. The sensation takes root deep within her, a pull that reaches from her stomach into her heart and outward. It’s subtle: a warmth, a gravity in his gaze, a slightly firm tone of voice. Already, something inside her is open and ready to connect with him.

But this time, she notices the pull inside and is able to pause, resisting it and slowing things down. She no longer wants to live and love unconsciously.

So she observes herself and Max. She likes Max, yes. But she wonders: “What do I truly love about him?”

And when the answer comes—his strength, his clarity, his calm—she understands: that’s also what she wants to grow into. She, too, is working on her small business. Even though there are more hard times than big paydays, she believes her business will become something that helps her community and herself. Recently, Sylvie faced a significant challenge when a major client delayed payment, putting a strain on her cash flow. Instead of panicking, she applied her newfound inner calm to the situation, negotiating a payment plan and seeking temporary lines of credit to keep her business afloat. This tangible hurdle mirrored her internal journey, illustrating how resilience and strategic thinking in her business parallel her personal growth. Logos is returning.

Sylvie moves forward cautiously, almost tenderly, toward herself. Just a few years ago, she would have mistaken her attraction to Max for an undeniable twist of fate. She would have interpreted the thrill, the feeling of immediate recognition, as a sign of destiny.

Today, she knows that these impulses are echoes of her old father wound: the distant memories of the little girl who sought refuge with a father who didn’t truly see her, who never encouraged her passions, who never looked at her with dazzlement.

She keeps those impulses close, knowing they could easily take over. She slows down the relationship so she can stay aware and let her choices guide her. It’s not about protecting herself from love, but about making sure love doesn’t become her only safe place.

Sometimes, she surprises herself with her new clarity. She notices what used to trigger her: the way Max carries himself, his walk, his calm confidence, and the gentleness in his teasing. She feels she could lose herself in him, but now she also notices a part of herself watching it happen. Her body still reacts, but now it feels like a gentle pinch instead of a heavy blow.

She finds herself savoring this vigilance. She no longer sits in the mistrust of the past, born of the fear of being betrayed, but a broader awareness, almost a form of soul maturity: I see you, and I see myself seeing you.

Their interactions become a mirror for her. When he speaks with such quiet confidence, she feels the echo of her father rise up, that mixture of admiration and self-effacement. But instead of tensing up, she breathes. She lets the wave pass, then she answers calmly. And in this simple gesture—daring to speak without justifying herself—she feels the child within her rise a little prouder, a little taller within herself.

Max has known that Sylvie was unlike any other woman he has dated in the past. Unlike other relationships, she does not try to impress him. There is a depth in the way she listens that disarms him and drops him into his emotions and abysmal inner world.

Whenever he is with Sylvie, he no longer feels the need to prove himself. That feels refreshing, and he can finally relax. It might be the first time he has felt loved without feeling pressure to earn it.

Sylvie is gradually discovering that to love consciously is not to seek to merge.

Unconscious love constantly seeks to fill an inner void, to possess, to fuse with the other to avoid feeling the lack. It ultimately wants to repair what was broken in childhood.

To love consciously is not to love without the presence of fear or triggers. It is to love while recognizing the fear and staying connected in spite of that fear and the triggers.

It is to be able to say, “My fear is still here, this old companion of mine, but she no longer decides for me.” It is also to love without confusing connection with fusion. When we love unconsciously, we want to unite so as not to exist separately, to avoid the anxiety of abandonment or being reminded of the old “not good enough” wound.

When we love consciously, we remain two separate people, and it is this distance that allows desire, energy, and growth to flourish.

In the silences that seem to interrupt their bond at times, Sylvie sometimes feels the jolt of an old memory: that of the little girl who watched her father from afar, waiting for his letter, hoping that one day he would turn around and choose Sylvie. Tonight, she feels she can sit next to her inner little self and tell her that no, he won’t come back, but look, we are here now, whole. You have your own strength, and we are so capable of loving ourselves, now don’t we?

And perhaps that is what healing is: not closing the wound but learning to breathe love, compassionate witnessing into its layers.

Sometimes, the wound of the father still awakens without proper warning.

It’s a smell, a tone in Max’s voice, or a silence that lasts too long on the phone. Right away, something inside her stirs, like a pulse: run to him, make sure he’s still there, that he loves you, that he won’t leave, that he hasn’t met someone more beautiful or brilliant. It’s an old, deep feeling, a reflex that comes before thoughts and can’t be reasoned with. It can only be felt. Sylvie notices these impulses and lets them pass. She feels her heart tighten and practices patience. She knows these old reactions will fade soon. Sometimes, she cries to let the pain of her father’s absence return, but she doesn’t hold onto it. Other times, she speaks softly, as if to a child: “I know, it’s difficult, you want us to see you, to hold you. I’m here.”

Sylvie closes her eyes, sits down, and places a hand on her stomach. She feels the contraction, that familiar hollow in the middle of her chest and the pit of her stomach. She knows it’s not Max she wants: it’s the certainty of existing for someone, the certainty that she will never be left ever again. The promise that someone’s gaze will remain fixed upon her, no matter how much she loathes herself.

And in that moment, she remembers that phrase, heard years earlier, spoken by an old woman at a cosmetic counter with a serene gaze:

“Stay with the tension of opposites. Don’t try to resolve it. That’s where the soul grows.” So she stays. She doesn’t fight the longing, nor does she drown it in denial and self-shaming.

She lets it live and breathe.

The somatic tools she has practiced for years—conscious breathing, grounding, micro-movements—become true acts of mothering.

For years, Sylvie’s emotions would spill outward at the slightest touch. The need to be seen, the anxiety of being abandoned, the wish to merge — all of it needed to find a recipient. That was her way of surviving. But now, the same emotions move inside the space she has created within herself and with herself. They no longer flood her; they circulate. They have air to breathe, and she has room to let them traverse her without getting stuck in them.

“I can feel myself holding myself,” she thinks, searching for the words as she rides the metro to see Max. “It’s strange. It’s almost physical, like I have walls inside, but now they breathe. They don’t close in on me or make me want to run or fight. This is new,” she tells herself.

They sit facing each other in a small restaurant near the Canal Saint Martin. The evening light stretches across the wine glasses; everything seems peaceful, but something, imperceptibly, tenses inside her, and she starts to withdraw. Max has withdrawn over the past few minutes, and her efficient protective walls return and pull her into herself. Max answers in monosyllables, his gaze elsewhere. Sylvia can tell something is awry, and a part of her assumes it’s something she did.

In the past, this kind of silence would have been enough to send her into a panic. She would have started talking too much, justifying herself, searching his face for signs of some imaginary fault.

But in that moment, she feels the wave rising, she recognizes it—it’s the old fear returning.

The fear of her father’s withdrawal, of love withdrawing without explanation, of its sudden departure. Her body tenses, her throat tightens, and her whole being wants to rush toward him to bridge the distance.

So she breathes deeper. She feels the heaviness of her feet on her wooden floor.

She discreetly places a hand on his thigh, under the table. She feels the warmth of her own skin, the solidity of his body, the pulse of life. She doesn’t push away the discomfort; she contains it and continues to return to her breath.

An inner gesture, almost imperceptible to Max, but her entire nervous system is learning another source for self to rely on. In her head, she hears the voice of that old woman she sat to next on a flight in 2019:

“Stay with your own tension of opposites.”

And that of her analyst, who had once suggested:

“Love isn’t the disappearance of conflict, Sylvie, it’s the ability to remain within it without dissolving into it.”

So she stays. She asks for nothing, fills nothing. She simply looks at Max.

He finally looks up, a little embarrassed.

“Sorry,” he says, “I’ve had an exhausting day.”

“I know,” she replies softly. “I understand.”

Nothing dramatic, but for Sylvie, it’s a silent shift indeed.

Returning home, she finds herself smiling.

This time, she didn’t seek understanding or reassurance.

She was present for him, but especially for herself.

As she walks home that evening, she feels it: the invisible structure inside her. The soft but steady shape of her inner world. She is no longer an open wound searching for shelter; she is the shelter.
The father wound hasn’t vanished; it has found its place.

Sylvie’s story mirrors what so many of us discover on the path of individuation: that behind every yearning for *the* man who will “see” us lies an inner masculine principle still waiting to be constellated from our unconscious.
In The Animus Course, we explore exactly this terrain — the place where the father wound meets the possibility of mature inner partnership with oneself.

In the Animus workshop, you will learn to:
• Recognize the unconscious patterns that repeat the early dynamics with the father.
• Reclaim your own strength, direction, and discernment — the qualities once projected onto men.
• Rebuild a conscious relationship with your inner masculine so that your love, work, and creativity come from self-authority rather than longing.
• Integrate the four stages of the Animus, moving from projection to inner alliance.

Learn more or join here: womenofdepthpsychology.com/animusworkshop

Prologue – The Shadow of the Father

Every woman carries within her an inner image of the masculine, shaped by her relationship to her father, to language, to the collective masculine, and to authority.

Jung called this figure the Animus.

He is neither a memory nor a man; he is a direction — a force of thought and meaning, the principle of order and verticality that seeks union with the feminine. It is not about gender, but it is rather about universal psychological forces within the psyche (unfortunately at times) named symbolically by genderized terms.

When it remains unconscious, the Animus acts from the outside — it fascinates, enchants, can even make one believe in the encounter with “great love.”

He incarnates himself in a man onto whom the woman unknowingly projects the attributes of her own ideal spirit, or even of her lost father.

It is not the man she loves, but the image she has cast upon him — the bearer of the inner masculine she has not yet dared to claim as her own.

Yet the task is not to reject the man the moment the projection is recognized.

For projection is not a mistake to correct, but an internal phenomenon to grow through.

To flee the man, the other in the name of psychological lucidity would be to reject the very mirror of our transformation.

Sylvie is a 35-year-old woman who believes she has fallen in love with a man named Max—but what she truly encounters is her own Animus, the inner masculine she has not yet integrated. In the first version of her story, Sylvie remains possessed by her projection: she idealizes Max, seeing him as wiser, deeper, almost fated, and slowly loses herself in the waiting for his love to confirm her worth. In the second version, a light of awareness appears—she realizes that the qualities she adores in him, clarity, strength, spiritual depth, are the very ones trying to emerge within her. By withdrawing the projection, she no longer seeks completion outside herself and begins to embody the inner protective masculine that gives her direction and alignment with her inner center. Her story becomes a parable of transformation—from enchantment to consciousness, from possession to freedom, from romantic illusion to individuation.

There could have been a third version of Sylvie’s story — one in which, aware of her father wound and the tender places in her psyche, she chooses to remain in connection with Max while keeping the thread of her inner discernment intact.

For the true work of the Animus is not to banish the external man, but to learn to see him truly through the lens of projection.

So. Sylvie falls under the spell of an Animus projection.

We’ll explore two versions of her story: one where she never becomes aware of her projection, and another where she finally does.

Sylvie, Track 1.

Sylvie, a philosophy teacher, has been single for two years.

She meets Max on Tinder — a charming, almost unreal man who reminds her of both her first love and her father. Tall, dark, charismatic, confident— he runs one of the top fifty tech companies in France. He comes from the same Ukrainian region as her father - the odds of meeting such a man in her small French town as second to none.

When she comes across his Tinder profile, he takes her breath away. Something in her recognizes him — not the man himself, but an old inner image, powerful and familiar, the archetype of the idealized father.

His gaze seems to carry a promise: salvation for Sylvie, at last. Then she swipes right.

“He’d never be interested in me,” she tells herself.

“He’s too perfect, too out of my league.”

But still — it’s comforting to know that men like him exist, men she can aspire to.

She takes screenshots and sends them to her best friend, giddy.

She sets her phone down, tries not to think about him too much. A few hours later — ding ding.

A notification lights up her screen: Max matched with you!

Her heart skips a beat. She tells herself to wait before answering, but the old emptiness stirs awake.

She tries to distract herself, but every cell of her body already knows its direction — drawn toward him like a compass to its true north.

He’s handsome, accomplished, from her father’s homeland, and loves philosophy — just like her.

He’s even lived in Asia, as she once did when she taught French in Singapore.

Could this be the one she’s been waiting for?

Max writes to her quickly…he first comments on the meaning of her name, “Sylvie,” connecting it to a favorite childhood memory of his.

She asks what he’s doing in her small town; it’s rare to find a man of his caliber here.

He speaks her father’s dialect — another coincidence. Or perhaps destiny. She always knew her soulmate would come from her father’s land. Her heart swells big: maybe destiny is finally validating my intuition.

They talk about their lives, the paths that brought them to this small town.

Then Max asks for her number — he says he prefers to talk off the app. A few days later, they speak on the phone and set a date for Friday night at a wine bar.

It’s forty minutes away from her work, but she doesn’t mind. He just moved here, she tells herself. It’s fine to make the effort.

It’ll be her first date in two years.

Day -4: The Preparation

It’s been two years since she dressed up for a date. This time, every gesture feels ceremonial.

She dedicates extensive energy to think about her appearance for their first date. In reality, she isn’t dressing for herself, but for the woman she imagines he would desire.

She visits eight stores before finding the perfect red blouse.

She buys new heels (with red soles), a new lipstick, a new perfume — to mark this new beginning.

An intoxicating scent, meant to linger on his clothes after their embrace tonight.

In line to pay for her fragrance, she scrolls through his photos again, lost in the daydream — their future together, maybe a return to his homeland together.

Her father would be SO proud. But that night, a part of her barely recognizes herself.

The ultra-feminine blouse, the seven-centimeter heels, the carefully drawn eyeliner — everything feels like a costume - she senses a gap between who she is and who she’s trying to be.

“I’ve never really had confidence anyway,” she mutters, adding one last touch of makeup to her green eyes — eyes that still don’t believe in their own worth.

The Fateful Meeting

Fresh red manicure, a few sprays of Dior, and she’s there — pulling into the wine bar’s parking lot.

She glances around, trying to look composed in case he was looking her at her walking and waiting for him.

A man with a large duffel bag slung over his shoulder, phone to his ear — Max. He looks almost 10 years older than his photos, but still handsome.

He seems a bit dazed, but smiles as he approaches.

“Dobryi den,” he says in Ukrainian, kissing her cheeks.

They sit down.

As they start eating, Max keeps looking around the room, uneasy, as if being watched.

After a few minutes, he asks to change tables — “too many people listening to me,” he says.

His attention flickers; every few minutes he seems to remember she’s there.

He explains that he arrived only two weeks ago, that he has to leave his Airbnb tonight because of an issue with the host, and that he doesn’t yet have a car.

His hands fidget. He’s just nervous, Sylvie tells herself.

Somewhere deep down, a tiny muscle tightens in her gut area.

Her body senses something she refuses to see.

It’s not him she’s looking at — it’s the promise he represents.

He takes out his Ukrainian passport, and she touches it as if it were gold.

He places his hand gently on her back and Her attraction swells again, she stares at him with glimmering eyes. Her dream was becoming true. Chin resting in her palm, she drifts into the magical trance of limerence, lost in the shimmering fantasy of her ideal man in front of her very eyes.

She doesn’t notice the inconsistencies, the strange behavior — only his strength, his confidence, his aura of protection, his Ukrainian accent she finds oh so sexy.

He stands tall, chest lifted every time he recalls to do so, his chin high. She doesn’t notice the compensations.

She feels safe, she always wanted a virile, protective man.

The evening ends with the promise of another date.

Max disappears into the night with his duffel bag.

How will he get to his next place? She doesn’t think to ask.

Driving home, she whispers, “Thank you, life. Thank you, destiny.”

She pauses her dating profile as soon as she gets home.

She believes.

The Descent

Two days later, Max just happens to attend an event three minutes from her house.

He texts her to ask what she is doing. She cancels her plans to meet him for gelato and tea.

Weeks pass.

Sylvie falls deeply in love — or rather, she falls into the mirage of her Animus.

That inner masculine force takes hold of her, guiding her, convincing her to give, to understand, to adapt herself. To accommodate to retain love, to prevent it from flying away again.

Her own voice grows quieter, but she doesn’t notice.

She isn’t loving a man; she’s loving her idea of him.

Seventeen days after they first met, Max confesses: he lost everything in a bad investment.

All he has left are his clothes and the contents of his bag. He asks if he can stay with her for a week or two.

She agrees instantly, without considering it for a moment. Finally, someone needs her. An extraordinary man is choosing her.

Years go by.

Sylvie fades away from her old self.

Max brings his mother to live with them, Sylvie takes care of her full-time, eventually quitting her job “to make him happy.”

She lives inside his story now, Functions to please him, becomes erased from her own existence.

The Awakening

Five years later, her doctor refers her to a psychoanalyst — he suspects depression.

The week before, Sylvie accidentally opened a bank letter addressed to Max.

A hidden account with a balance of eighty thousand euros.

She says nothing. He is generous with her and takes care of her financially while she tends to his darling mother - she considers herself fortunate.

A year later, Max disappears — three weeks after his mother’s death.

Sylvie returns to analysis, this time Jungian.

To understand her father wound and to meet the inner man she had projected outward.

And to begin, finally, to be born from herself.

Sylvie – Track 2 (making the projection conscious)

The same restaurant. The same amber light spilling across the wooden tables, the same half-empty glasses of wine waiting between two people who barely know each other.

Only this time, the woman sitting there is no longer the same.

Sylvie chose her outfit with care tonight, but without the faintest trace of nervousness.

No yearning to please nor perform - she wants to feel like herself above all — grounded, with her soul visible from the inside out.

Before leaving home, she looked in the mirror for a long, quiet moment and whispered to her reflection:

“Tonight, remember — love doesn’t mean losing yourself. You can stay true, even in desire.”

When she arrives, Max is already there — phone to his ear, a large black duffel bag slung across his shoulder.

The scene feels strangely familiar, as if replayed from a dream: the same gestures, the same rhythm, the same atmosphere. But inside her, the landscape has changed completely.

Max turns, smiles, ends his call, and greets her in Ukrainian. That accent — textured, warm, carrying the echo of her father’s voice — ripples through her.

For an instant, her chest tightens and her heart accelerates.

But instead of drowning in the sweetness of recognition, she simply notices it.

She knows her father wound well — the tender, dangerous place inside her psyche that opens whenever paternal warmth appears in a man’s voice.

It’s the wound she has worked so hard to understand: the wound of insufficient fathering, of confidence, of protection she never fully received.

She knows that if she lets that part run the show, it will steer her toward the same blind love — the kind that devours rather than nourishes.

So as Max speaks, she keeps that part of herself close by, not hidden or denied, but gently held, like a restless child she now knows how to soothe.

They sit down. Max’s eyes dart across the room, restless, searching for something unseen.

He talks a lot — fragments, boasts, digressions and some incoherences that don’t quite make sense. Sylvie listens without judgment, registering the subtle mismatches, the flickers of insecurity behind the charm. “He just moved here. Perhaps he is shy and is trying not to show it.”

He asks her a few questions, lightly, as if ticking a box.

She senses his effort and smiles inwardly.

Instead of compensating and filling the silence to protect him, she lets the quiet settle between them. It feels natural. Spacious.

When he pulls out his Ukrainian passport, she remembers the younger version of herself — the woman who would have reached for it instantly, thrilled by the symbol, by the echo of her father’s homeland.

Tonight, she just observes it, asks questions about his voyages around the world, then looks away.

The old reflex passes like a wave, and she breathes through it, letting the memory dissolve.

She doesn’t need to make meaning out of coincidence anymore. She steers her life direction.

When he places his hand lightly on her back, she shifts just enough to honor her body’s truth.

It’s a small gesture, invisible to others, but to her it feels monumental — the quiet power of listening inwardly and premature touch.

Years of trauma therapy, analysis distilled into a single, graceful movement to remain tethered to her center.

The evening unfolds gently. She tells him about her students, about teaching philosophy and helping adolescents search for meaning in a world that’s forgotten how to be still.

He listens, then veers back toward his ventures, his ambitions, his “complicated landlord.” She hears it all but remains anchored.

Once, she would have tried to impress him, to earn back his attention, to win his gaze.

Now she lets the evening be what it is — a simple human encounter rather than an audition for her destiny.

When they step outside, he walks her to her car.

He leans in to kiss her, but she turns slightly, offering her cheek instead as not to reject him entirely.

A clear, kind no without apology.

She smiles, thanks him for the evening, and closes the car door.

For a long moment she sits there, hands resting on the wheel, heart steady, awareness quiet and full.

“You can love without disappearing,” she whispers. “You can desire and still remain whole.”

Three Days Later

A message flashes on her phone: a selfie of Max, a badge from the event hanging around his neck.

“I’m three minutes from your place. What are you up to tonight?”

Her chest stirs — she notices that small flutter— but right behind it rises something steadier, peaceful: discernment.

Three minutes from her place? Maybe coincidence, maybe not.

She sets the phone down and listens to her body: is this excitement, curiosity, or the old reflex to replay an unfinished story?

After a pause, she writes back:

“Sure. Gelato? In an hour?”

Twenty minutes later, she finds him outside the little Italian shop, the same duffel bag slung across his shoulder.

He speaks quickly, weaving a story about moving Airbnbs, about a business idea that sounds ambitious and unsteady all at once.

Sylvie listens as if she were watching weather patterns — curious, observant, unattached.

She notices how he lifts his chest, how he performs strength to cover vulnerability.

And instead of feeling drawn to fix it, she simply feels compassion — not pity, but the calm tenderness that comes from understanding human defenses.

They walk and eat their gelato. After an hour, she says softly,

“I should head home. Early morning at work tomorrow.”

He seems thrown off, as though the rhythm has shifted.

She smiles — kind, composed — and leaves.

He doesn’t walk her to her car.

She notices, notes it in the back of her mind, lets it be.

⸻

The Turning Point

At 2:30 a.m., her phone buzzes.

The same pattern. He always textes after midnight and never during daytime.

“You awake? Thinking of you.”

She looks at the screen glowing in the dark.

Once, that message would have lit her up.

Now, she reads it as information — a clue, not an encouragement to fantasies some more.

She doesn’t respond until later that day.

In the morning, she opens her journal for deeper reflections on her emotional world…

She asks herself a very specific question to understand what she thinks about Max and how she feels about him:

“If Max weren’t from my father’s country, if his voice didn’t carry that accent — if I stripped away the entire paternal aura and the ressemblance with my first love —

would I still be attracted to him?”

She pulls the real, human man away from the shiny projection.

The silence and realisation that follows feel crisp, clear.

She realizes that she would not be attracted to the rest of the man she interacted with if he weren’t from her father’s land, carrying that accent and that symbolic passport that took her back to her paternal ancestry, a part of her family she never knew and suffered from the mystery.

It hurts, but it’s the kind of pain that brings awareness to old patterns when those return to test our inner work and level of consciousness.

She feels the projection loosen, slipping away like a skin she no longer needs. The spell drops.

Integration

Weeks pass.

Max still sends messages, uneven, tentative.

She answers occasionally, warmly but without attachment.

No anger, no drama…just the tide withdrawing naturally.

Then one night, she dreams.

She stands on a hill beneath a sky of pearl gray.

A man walks toward her.

His face changes as he approaches — first Max’s, then her father’s, then no face at all, just light.

The light touches her chest, travels upward, and she becomes part of it — a column of gold joining earth and sky. Perhaps even her animus becoming a bit more integrated.

She will take that dream to her Jungian Analyst, next week.

Outside, winter sunlight gleams on the windows of her office.

Sylvie walks slowly, her spine lengthened, breath easy.

No more hunger to be completed, no ache to be chosen — only a quiet gold line running through her center.

She smiles to herself, murmuring:

What I sought in men was never them. It was in me first before I ever saw it in them — the axis, the direction, the presence, the protection — but my unconscious tricked me into believing I wasn’t capable of embodying those traits.

She closes her eyes.

And the whole world seems to breathe with her.

Sylvie’s story spoke to something in you — that magnetic pull between love, illusion, and recalling projections to transmute attraction into either love or discernment — I invite you to go deeper through our upcoming workshop.

My upcoming Animus Workshop will guide participants to recognize how romantic projection takes shape and how to transform it into inner integration and self-awareness.

Learn more or join here: womenofdepthpsychology.com/animusworkshop

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In recent days, several individuals have confided in me the immense psychological toll they feel after Charlie Kirk's assassination. They described it as heavier, more psychically and emotionally costly than other public losses. Listening to them, I realized that we are not just experiencing an isolated event but a more somber impression: an entire dystopian climate seems to be taking hold in our psychological reality.

Until recently, dystopia always belonged to the fiction realm, we have build sufficient trust in our ego, laws, machinery to protect us from the crossing into reality. Sure, 1984, Brave New World, and The Handmaid's Tale seemed like warning signs, but today, the boundaries have blurred: it is becoming part of our lived experience. Many express the impression of walking into a waking dystopian nightmare.

Everyday life itself seems saturated with absurdity and threat, and the mind finds itself searching, almost in spite of itself, for analogies with imaginary worlds of control, surveillance, and violence.

This effect has profound consequences on the psyche. Reality takes on an unreal aspect, as if traversed by a veil, and this collective derealization creates a sense of vertigo. The future no longer appears as a promise but as a threat: each crisis leads to another, and the imaginary future shrinks. The self itself fragments, caught in contradictions that are impossible to contain. Some withdraw, others split themselves to cope with the tension, and still others become morally exhausted by the feeling of no longer being able to control anything.

Why is this nightmarish impression so widespread? Probably because media saturation continually projects images of a world collapsing. Perhaps also because crises follow one another at such a rapid pace that the mind recognizes in them the narrative mechanics of great dystopian fiction. But there is something even deeper: we have lost the stories that once contained anguish. Religious, political, humanist narratives, all those great frameworks capable of giving meaning to collective suffering, have cracked. Deprived of these symbolic barriers, we are exposed to the shadow of nothingness.

Dystopia then acts like an archetypal shadow. It covers the collective imagination and paralyzes it. Parodoxically, it is also in this shadow that a breach emerges. An aperture. For every fracture opens a passage, a gap where another possibility insinuates itself through the dark. Within the very experience of the nightmare lies the opportunity to refuse anesthesia, to demand truth, to dare to create, to remain human, to hold onto human interactions to prevent our brains from slipping into dehumanization of the other.

When we live in an atmosphere we perceive as having dystopian traits, our brains constantly process signals of threat and uncertainty. This chronically activates the amygdala, our emotional alert center. What ensues is the background running of anxiety, hypervigilance, and rumination galore. The prefrontal cortex, which helps us reason, plan, and put things into perspective, is often overwhelmed by this emotional activation. This is why, in an atmosphere of "collective nightmare," decisions become more impulsive, thoughts more polarized, and nuance is lost.

We must also talk about neural plasticity: by constantly evolving in an atmosphere saturated with dark images and catastrophic stories, our thought circuits reorganize themselves. The brain learns to anticipate the worst, to constantly scan for signs of danger. The dystopia we experience is therefore not just a perception: it leaves a physiological trace, it "sculpts" our neural pathways towards fear, mistrust, and despair.

In short: permanent dystopia puts the brain in survival mode, quicker to detect danger than to invent meaning.

Perhaps, the solution lies in hygienic care of the soul. If dystopia compresses the mind into survival mode, our task is to re-open the aperture of our conditioned . This begins with daily discipline: returning to the body, to the breath, to rhythms that remind our nervous system that it is not designed solely for threat. Regulation does not come from the outside but from an inner, patient and stubborn re-education.

And there is a simple, but concrete gesture: learning to restrain ourselves in our online disagreements. Each violent argument feeds the dystopian climate by activating our brains as if we were in vital danger. Discipline then consists of not letting ourselves be sucked in, of preserving an inner space of nuance and silence. Refusing to exhaust ourselves in digital confrontations is a way of rejecting collective hypnosis, and to return to the only way to hold the humanity of disagreements: face-to-face.