"Whoso looks into the unfathomable depths of the psyche dives into a world where all the elements of life are mixed in chaotic confusion. There is the treasure hard to attain, the pearl of great price, but also the monster of the deep. He who descends into his own darkness brings up the gold of the spirit, but he also awakens what is asleep and dangerous."”
— Carl Jung, Collected Works Vol. 9i: The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious
The Session
After more than twenty-five years of clinical practice and over 20,000 hours in the therapy room, I wanted to make a film of what it is actually like to undergo a profound psychotherapy session: not talk therapy as such, but a direct encounter with unconscious material and dialogue with your own sub-personalities, a process Jung called active imagination.
The film takes a real, live therapy session as its inspiration, moving through myth and archetypal imagery: a conscious descent, a guided journey through the underworld, tracing the integration of deep trauma, and the return to the surface — release, flow, and post-traumatic growth.
47 Years in Tibet
This was made in the late 1990s as a response to what was happening in Tibet at the time. John Cleese narrates, with a score by Ryuichi Sakamoto and a song by Yungchen Lhamo.
The film premiered at the London Human Rights Film Festival that year.
Inscape
Inscape was my first outing as a student director, in the early 1990s. It is the story of an artist's descent into the unconscious, born from a creative impasse. Once it was written, we shot the first section in Brooklyn, on Panavision.
In 1994 I travelled to the Peruvian Amazon, returning in 1996 with a small crew and an Arriflex 16mm camera. We stayed two weeks deep in the rain forest, filming Don Agustín as he prepared the medicine, and later the ceremonies themselves. That footage became the film's inner journey as the artist reconnects with his own inspiration.
Writing
The Transcendent Function
An Essay on Jung's concept of the Trascendent Fuctionn - the psyche's capacity to hold the tension betwenn the conscious and unconcious material, allowing new previously unavailable possibilities to emerge.
INTERVIEWS
Conversations on trauma, healing, and the unconscious.
The Trauma-Informed Revolution
A conversation on trauma, the unconscious, and what it means to work in a trauma-informed way.
The Grief Revolution
A conversation on grief, shame, and loss — and what it means to let them move through us rather than around us.
Patriarchy and the Wound
On being born into patriarchy, vulnerability, shame, and dissociation — and what therapy asks of us in return.
Death, Rebirth, and Ayahuasca
A personal story of the search for connection, unprocessed unconscious material, and the ayahuasca experience.
Get in touch
FILM & PRODUCTION
THERAPY & CLINICAL WORK
ifstherapy.org