Toward a Grounded Depth Psychology

In this series, I’ve explored why Jung is resonating with a new generation and examined both the genuine insights and problematic mystifications in his work. Now I want to sketch what a grounded depth psychology might look like—one that honors the hunger for meaning while staying anchored in what we actually know about how minds work.

The Unconscious as Automated Learning

A naturalized depth psychology starts with a simple recognition: Much of our mental life operates outside conscious awareness. This isn’t mystical; it’s how brains work. Neural systems learn patterns and then run them automatically, freeing conscious attention for novel challenges.

Think about driving a car. When you first learned, every action required conscious attention. Now, if you’re an experienced driver, you can navigate complex traffic while carrying on a conversation. The driving has become automated—unconscious in the functional sense.

The same process applies to psychological patterns. We learn how to relate to others, how to manage emotions, and how to think about ourselves. These learned patterns become automated. They feel like who we are rather than what we learned. And crucially, much of this learning happens in early childhood, before we have the cognitive capacity to evaluate what we’re absorbing.

The Problem of Pre-Critical Learning

Here’s where depth psychology becomes necessary: The patterns we learned before we could think critically about them may not serve us well. A child who learned that expressing anger leads to abandonment may, as an adult, automatically suppress healthy assertiveness. A child who learned that love is unreliable may, as an adult, automatically push away intimacy. These patterns made sense once—they were adaptive responses to actual situations—but they continue running long after the original situations have passed.

This is the shadow, naturalistically understood: not rejected archetypal content rising from a collective unconscious, but automated patterns from childhood learning that were never critically examined. We exile parts of ourselves because we learned they were dangerous or unacceptable. They continue operating from the shadows.

Making the Unconscious Conscious

Therapy, in this framework, involves recognizing automated patterns and subjecting them to adult evaluation. What rules am I following without knowing I’m following them? What beliefs about myself and relationships did I absorb before I could question them? Are these patterns still serving me, or are they keeping me stuck?

This is harder than it sounds because these patterns feel like reality, not like learned responses. When you automatically suppress anger, it doesn’t feel like you’re following a rule—it feels like anger is dangerous. When you automatically distance from intimacy, it doesn’t feel like a defense—it feels like you just need space. The pattern is invisible precisely because it’s so automatic.

Making the unconscious conscious means catching yourself in the act—recognizing the pattern as it operates, feeling the feelings that the pattern defends against, and choosing a different response. Over time, with repetition, new patterns can become automated, replacing the old ones.

The Structure of the Psyche

Ancient psychology, particularly Plato’s, offers a useful framework for thinking about psychic structure. Plato described the soul as having distinct parts: appetite (our drives for pleasure, comfort, and satisfaction), spirit (our orientation toward recognition, honor, and belonging), and reason (our capacity for reflection and abstract thought). To these I add a fourth: the executive function that governs and coordinates the others.

This maps remarkably well onto what neuroscience tells us about brain architecture. The appetites (epithumos) correspond to brainstem and cerebellar functions—our basic survival drives and automatic regulatory systems. The spirit (thumos) corresponds to the limbic system—our emotional processing and social-emotional responses. Reason (logistikon) corresponds to the cerebral cortex, particularly the neocortex—our capacity for abstract thought, language, and higher cognition. And the executive function I call auto politeia corresponds to the prefrontal cortex—our capacity for metacognition, self-observation, and the coordination of the other systems.

Psychological health, in this view, involves these parts working together rather than being at war, what Plato called a well-governed soul. The appetites aren’t suppressed but educated. The spirit isn’t silenced but channeled. Reason doesn’t tyrannize but informs. And the executive function—auto politeia—coordinates the whole, establishing the internal constitution by which we govern ourselves.

What You Can Do

If you’re drawn to shadow work or depth psychology, here are some grounded principles to guide you:

Notice your automatic reactions. When you feel triggered, defensive, or reactive, you’re probably encountering an automated pattern. Get curious rather than acting immediately.

Question inherited rules. Ask yourself: Where did I learn this? Does it still make sense? What would happen if I responded differently?

Feel what you usually avoid. The patterns we learned in childhood often involve avoiding certain feelings: anger, grief, vulnerability. Allowing yourself to feel these feelings, rather than automatically defending against them, is often where change happens.

Seek relational context. The deepest psychological work usually happens in a relationship with a therapist, a trusted friend, or a group. We learned our patterns in relationships; we often need relationships to revise them.

Be patient with yourself. Patterns that took years to install don’t change overnight. Progress is often subtle and non-linear.

Depth Without Mystification

The hunger that drives people to Jung and shadow work is real and legitimate. We need frameworks for self-understanding that go beyond symptom checklists. We need ways of engaging with the hidden dimensions of our experience. We need depth.

But we don’t need inherited archetypes or a mystical collective unconscious. We can have the depth while staying grounded in how learning, memory, and brain systems actually work. We can honor ancient wisdom—Plato understood the soul better than many modern psychologists—without adopting metaphysical claims that don’t survive scrutiny.