Foundations: Our Lineage, Orientation & the Ground We Stand On.

OUR ORIENTATION

The Work We Stand For.

The Psychodynamic Coaching Institute exists because not everything that shapes human behaviour is conscious, and not everything that limits us is pathological.

Many people are very capable, reflective, and grounded, yet find themselves asking big questions like "who am I? What's my purpose?", as well as repeating patterns, encountering inner conflict, or meeting resistance that cannot be resolved through insight, effort, or aspiration alone.

The Psychodynamic Coaching Institute was created to support work at this depth: where meaning, identity, and unconscious dynamics are met directly without medicalising and without reducing to performance coaching.

THE FOUNDATION OF OUR WORK

Our Lineage is Jungian.

Our approach to psychodynamic coaching is grounded in Jungian thought, informed by contemporary somatic awareness and depth coaching practices.

While the term psychodynamic is often associated with Freudian psychoanalysis, it refers more broadly to a family of psychological traditions concerned with unconscious forces, inner conflict, and meaning.

The Swiss Psychoanalyst, Carl Jung, expanded psychodynamic thought beyond pathology and treatment into a developmental, symbolic understanding of the psyche. His work centred heavily on the lifelong psychospiritual process of Individuation - the movement toward becoming one’s True Self.

For Jung, individuation was not achieved through positive thinking, aspiration, or external performance. It required honest engagement with contradiction, conflict, and shadow - and a willingness for identity to reorganise from within.

We honour this depth tradition, while translating it into a coaching context focused on awareness, meaning, and conscious authorship.

THE ROLE OF SOMATIC AWARENESS

The Body as a Visible Expression of the Soul.

For Carl Jung, psyche and body were never separate. He understood the body as the visible expression of the soul, and recognised that unconscious material is lived somatically - through emotion, sensation, and felt sense - often before it becomes thinkable.

We work from this Jungian understanding, using somatic awareness to support the work.

In our work, the body is approached as:

• a carrier of unconscious information

• an early messenger of inner conflict

• an intelligent partner in transformation

• a site where psyche is lived, not just understood

Somatic awareness supports presence, meaning-making, and ethical containment. It is not therapy or trauma treatment, but part of working with the psyche as it is actually experienced.

PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT

Scope & Responsibility. 

We view personal development as a continuum. Different forms of support serve different moments, and ethical practice across all professions depends on discernment rather than hierarchy.

Human growth unfolds over time and across contexts. At different moments, people may benefit from different forms of support such as coaching, therapy, body-based work, spiritual practice, or other modalities. These approaches are not in opposition, but form a wonderful continuum of support and development.

Psychodynamic life coaching occupies a specific place on that continuum.

Whilst trauma-informed, it is not psychotherapy. It does not diagnose or treat mental illness, addiction, active crisis, or pathology.

Instead, it works with themes such as:

• meaning, identity, and self-authorship

• shadow, projection, emotional wisdom

• imagination, symbolism, and inner life

• embodied awareness and meaning

• the maturation of consciousness

We train coaches to work ethically within a coaching container, and to recognise when collaboration or referral to therapeutic or clinical support is appropriate.