Depth Psychology Applied to Addiction Counseling

Disclaimer: Nothing in this document should be taken or held as clinical instruction, clinical supervision, or advisory concerning patient care.

Below is the full text of a 98 page monograph I have written on depth psychology applied to addiction counseling.

My plan is to eventually re-write the main content in the form of a simple blog series. And to push the whole series out all at once so people can read it at the pace they choose, without having to wait. If I do, each section will be simpler and shorter. More accessible.

This writing represents some of the products that came from my still-ongoing multi-year study of certain areas of philosophy, the psychoanalytic literature, and research that has been done on the dynamic change processes that happen during what we commonly call “recovery” from SUD’s. Or what we could just call people simply healing in whatever path they choose. I hope parts of it make the reader stretch a bit. Maybe a good bit. For me the stretch has been tremendous.

My sustained effort at reading, listening, having key discussions, attempting to wrestle with key areas of Depth Psychology, and applying them to our work comes from a rather deep part of me as a person. In short, during my academic training in psychology (bachelor’s) and community-clinical psychology (master’s) we learned radical behaviorism. That meant we learned to focus on behavior, and almost nothing more. I’ve become quite discontent with that very limited and narrow world view.

Over the last several years I’ve undertaken a very different and very focused path of study. That path of study has been very helpful to me as a clinician, as a clinical supervisor of counseling, and as a clinical supervisor of clinical supervision. The document below contains but a portion of the content I have picked up along the way, transformed, and kept with me.

Not everyone will have an interest in the topic of this monograph. Not everyone will choose to read through it in its entirety. But I’m certain some will read it through at a pace they can tolerate and benefit from.

As to the general relevance of the topic I’d like to say this. In today’s overly-mechanised, quantified, efficient, symptom-reduction focused, short-term, stabilization-focused, manualized, and protocol-driven world of addiction treatment and care of co-occurring disorders, some things of high value get lost. Like, the person of the patient, and the person of the clinician.

In other words, some of you might choose to open the document, glance through the table of contents, and see if something might serve your interests in your work of helping others in flourishing. Or to rise above or beyond the limits of narrowly-focused models like behaviorism, or the all-too-common healthcare-industrial complex many of us are familiar with.

For me the study has been a stretch. And for the reader, the reading will be a stretch. I hope the journey is the reward.