"Unity"---Breaking Apart into Wholeness  ~ Glenda Cedarleaf MSW LCSW

•  published in Imagery International's  "ImaginNews" July 2012

Tara came to my office exhausted and fearful.  She found out that her husband had been having an affair.  She was stunned and definitely not able or ready to make any decisions. She reflected, "I feel like I am losing myself". Although this woman was a dedicated mother, and gifted artist with a successful business, her identity as the betrayed spouse overcame her like a tidal wave and she spiraled into a depression.

We created a customized audio with her unique imagery of relaxation, inspiration and empowerment. She listened daily to this audio. It helped her to self soothe when she couldn’t sleep or when she felt triggered. As we explored in our imagery sessions the early experiences of abandonment and feelings of invisibility that were now manifesting again, she began to make important connections and embarked on the deep process of nurturing that lost inner child.

After a few sessions I told her about SoulCollage®.  Her eyes lit up, and with just a little instruction and some recommended videos to watch--she returned the next week with 15 completed SoulCollage® Cards.  In each card of various images she had included one cutout of a photograph of her face.  One I especially remember was a photo of a man gazing lovingly, admiringly, on a garden of orchids. Nestled in the blossom of one of these orchids was Tara's face.  She showed me the card and said--"This is how I want to be seen".

The following week she invited her husband to do SoulCollage® and to her surprise he agreed.  They are now working on their relationship not only in couple's counseling but also with this powerful process of bringing the denied and fragmented aspects of their lives and their relationship into focus through the lens of SoulCollage®.

 A week later she appeared with 15 more cards, describing the many parts of herself and the various roles she saw herself embodying. She spoke from the perspective of the images on the card  "I am one who. …”

She returns to her sessions now with a resolve to create her life in a new way. She is finding herself again---putting together the pieces and truly seeing her own essence. Now, her inner artist emerges boldly, and one card in particular seems to gaze back at her with true recognition--admiringly, lovingly.

Although she faces the challenges ahead of deciding whether or not to remain in the marriage, it is the power of imagery that is in part, carrying her through this crisis in her life. It is the power of imagery that deepens her experience of unity within.  It is a beautiful unfolding to witness.

Glenda Cedarleaf MSW LCSW is a clinical hypnotherapist, holistic psychotherapist, guided imagery practitioner and SoulCollage® Facilitator. She creates premade and customized imagery audios and also loves facilitating women's retreats. She will be leads  retreats that incorporate SoulCollage® and Guided Imagery. 

To learn more about SoulCollage® conceived by Seena Frost, visit www.soulcollage.com

                 THE BIG PICTURE: USING SOULCOLLAGE® IN PSYCHOTHERAPY
                                                                           by Katherine L. Ziegler, PhD

A nutritionally well-informed man in his 60s has four serious health conditions exacerbated by
his overeating, yet “loves it” although he sometimes stuffs himself to the point of pain. Dave**
remembers having been a skinny child who started overeating at age 5. He links this with his fear
of his father’s rages, and of a horror film in which a gigantic monster took over the Earth and
even the adults were powerless to stop him. With Internal Family Systems and transference work
(therapist, father, wife) over 13 months of therapy, his responsible self-assertion, self-care, and
security in his wife’s love increase. The eating binges subside, then recur.
Offered a SoulCollage® reading, Dave asks his intuitive wisdom (as accessed from among about
60 collaged cards, not made by him), “What do I need to know—no, do to stop this compulsive
behavior and start acting in my own best interest?” From a pile of the 8”x5” cards lying face
down, he picks four at random, sight unseen.

The first card shows a very muscular man working out with weights, a grim, ferociously
determined look on his face. Asked to imagine himself as that man and complete for him the
sentence stem “I Am One Who…,” Dave says, “I am completely determined to accomplish
something that’s utterly useless. Nothing will get in my way.” When Dave asks for his response to
the question, the image on the card dismisses it with contempt. Dave says, “This is not a guy I’d
take advice from at all! He’s so compulsive, so single-minded that he virtually has no mind.”
(The therapist thinks privately, this is one of those cards that depict “the one who is causing the
problem!” as Seena B. Frost, MFT, the originator of SoulCollage®, puts it. This bodybuilder
speaks for an aspect of what Ecker & Hulley (Depth-Oriented Brief Therapy) call the client’s
pro-symptom position, which as usual has been only semi-conscious—Dave’s anti-symptom
position, his distress at his overeating, is what brought him into therapy, since as usual this
position has not been effective in the long run at suppressing the unwanted behavior.

​Through our Internal Family Systems (IFS) work, we had discovered the overeating part’s strong desire to
defy the mother—“You can’t make me!” (eat in a healthy manner)—as a first step towards
developing his embattled autonomy. This bodybuilder may represent an even deeper motivation:
to become big and strong enough (per the parents’ commands to eat, though mother worried
about her own weight) to ward off monsters in a terrifying world where no adult could protect
him from his father’s rages and narcissistic demands. His own real self not fully seen by his
parents, and his development thus supported only in a lopsided way, Dave as a child seems to
have taken it upon himself to soothe and “parent” himself with the means ready to hand, and the
habit stuck.)

Another card depicts an erupting volcano, “full of energy,” that advises him to feel it in himself
and harness it in a productive way. Dave reflects, ”I guess this guy [card 1] has lots of energy
and is wasting it doing something stupid,” and acknowledges that it feels novel to think this might
be his own energy. The third card shows a man exploring a cave with a miner’s light on his
helmet, who seems to Dave to be genuinely curious and non-judgmental and who encourages him
to explore his own “innards.” The fourth card is one he says he “can’t relate to,” but he is
nevertheless able to try on the imagined viewpoint of the champion swimmer portrayed, who says,
“Decide what you want to do, then make it the focal point of your entire life.” Two months later,
his urges to binge-eat having dissipated, and exploring new directions in his relationship with his
wife, he happily leaves therapy, planning to return when his next growth phase beckons.
**SoulCollagers described come from various locales around the U.S. Names and identifying
information have been changed to further protect confidentiality.

I wrestled with writing this article for weeks, not finding a coherent way to organize the wealth of
material. Finally I remembered to consult my own SoulCollage® deck! I framed this question and
pulled two cards at random from among many dozens. The first suggested taking off a Carnival
mask to reveal the truth beneath. The second, shown here, reminded me of myself crouched
intently over my computer, up against the publication deadline, working to legitimize
SoulCollage® to my colleagues with a well-read and professional work. Seeing again the thrilling
riot of dancers surrendered to the music immediately brought up to awareness my great, even
rapturous, love of the whole process, starting with the hands-on shaping of images in collage to
express my vision. I realized that what I really want is to share with the reader why I love it.
Reunited with the source of my own powerful motivation, I sat sensing it, and the article reformed
itself and began to flow.

This incident may begin to reveal why SoulCollage® is not in itself a psychotherapy, but rather a
way of tuning in to alternate inner perspectives on one’s situation. Having to cast about to find
my truest motivation for this project does not seem to put me anywhere near fulfilling criteria for
any condition in the DSM-IV®-TR or, so far, in the DSM-V! People use SoulCollage® to
explore many ordinary life situations: career direction, whether to have a child or to dial back on
activities as they age, relationship impasse, health conditions, bafflement or impatience with their
progress on a spiritual path, embarking on a new year or other time of transition. One man asked,
“Why do things like Ouija boards, psychiatry, mysticism and religion make me so skeptical? I
can’t understand how other people can believe this.” The tag line for SoulCollage® is Discover
Your Wisdom, Change Your World™.

My SoulCollage® shift also illustrates why, throughout my career, I’ve returned over and over to
approaches that tap such experiences and emotions. As much as I enjoy skills coaching and value
cognitive-behavioral theory and technique, they address only certain aspects of the many-faceted
richness and inter-related intricacy of the psyche. Other important aspects remain unconscious.
Everyone behaves, perceives and apperceives, dreams, forms concepts, believes, imagines,
creates, values, feels emotion and sensation, relates to others, is rooted in a body and feels the call
of spirit in one form or another. It makes sense that we would be best served by psychotherapies
that are mindful, at least to some degree, of all of these aspects of who we are.

So Bruce Feingold’s article reviewing Jonathan Shedler’s 2010 piece in American Psychologist®
inspired me to reread it. Shedler identifies as psychoanalytic in origin several common factors
that the research he cites seems to show underlie good psychotherapy practiced from varying
theoretical points of view. Another piece of Shedler’s, “That Was Then, This Is Now: An
Introduction to Contemporary Psychodynamic Thought” (2006a), likewise shows that he shares
this ongoing integrative quest. And indeed, the word “soul” in SoulCollage® refers to one’s
whole self, including one’s embodied, lived experience.
​
The common factors Shedler (2010) describes are as follows. For each, I give examples of how
the SoulCollage® process can help implement these in psychotherapy, including in tandem with
other approaches.

1. Focus on affect and expression of emotion.
Laughter, weeping, and heartfelt expressions of esteem and support are common among
participants in SoulCollage® workshops and ongoing groups. The power of images to evoke and
express emotion is widely known. The word “image” can refer either to a physical likeness or to
“a mental representation; idea; conception” (Dictionary.com), but both are emotionally loaded.
The very framing of a question usually shows a person’s deepest area of concern at the moment.
In one workshop, participants showed each other cards they had just made. One woman held up
her card showing a plastic bride and groom atop a wedding cake against a bright red background.
“I want to get away from this old idea about how men and women should relate,” she said.
Divorced, she was exploring various kinds of friendship with men. Her reading question for her
cards was, “How do I stop my anxiety around eating sugar? I feel so out of control—it goes on
for days.” To her astonishment, the card she had thought represented a concept of marriage “said,”
“I am one who is enslaved to the sugar addiction, and trapped.”

Another card seemed to express her attempts to soothe herself with the idea “I am one who
celebrates my body and accepts my beauty, enjoys my curvy flesh.” But her voice lowered on the
words “body” and “beauty,” sounding dead and resigned. Another card prompted a pep talk about
ways to think herself through her “attachment to how things are supposed to be” and to move
beyond sugar to “be in control of your body and achieve great feats.” But the card that stood out
for her was the red one. “It’s hot, the sugar. I’m trying not to live in the polarity of “I can’t have
any,” but it just starts this anxiety! Uchhhhh!” Voicing the intensity of her emotion seemed a
needed step towards a workable solution.

2. Exploration of attempts to avoid distressing thoughts and feelings.
Unwanted, distressing feelings, thoughts, or action tendencies have been referred to by Jung and
others as “the shadow.” In her latest book, SoulCollage® Evolving, Frost builds upon this
concept to identify two ways in which any entity or energy depicted on a SoulCollage® card can
become shadowed: through “an exaggeration of its best energy—too much of it—or the absence
of its best energy—too little of it.” Take for example one common pattern, parenting: the idea that
one is either smothering or neglectful is highly distressing to most parents. The shadow is often
experienced as alien, as “not me,” is often seen only in projection onto others and suppressed,
repressed, hidden or acknowledged only with shame and discomfort in oneself. Healing can
include becoming aware of the positive elements or manifestations of the energy represented on
any one SoulCollage® card. The process of making cards and getting to know their many faces
over time, through readings and dialogs with the images, also seems to foster self-acceptance.
In SoulCollage®, every entity or energy is seen as a guide, ally, or (when shadowed) a
challenger of our conscious stance, of the status quo, and a challenge to our ability to rise to the
occasion and develop. What needs developing may be a more expanded view of a situation, or
our inner strengths, our patience or equanimity, or the gifts we have to give.

From the pile of images offered at a workshop, Doro quickly picked what she thought was just
any old image, in order to participate in the group’s introduction to the I Am One Who. The
picture showed a man in a ski cap glancing furtively over his shoulder while breaking into a car.
A law-abiding person, she certainly did not see herself in this figure but found herself saying, “I
am one who thinks I have to steal what I need.” Only later did she recognize this shameful, i.e.,
shadow aspect in herself, expressed in her doubts about being truly loved and accepted and her
scrounging for crumbs of affection and approval in covert ways.

In therapy, Doro collaged a card on which the thief teetered on the edge of an abyss into which he
feared to fall if he did not steal (representing her new understanding and compassion for this part
and its life history). She glued to his jacket a picture of a man lifting a veil, to peer beneath it into
the new life just coming into view. Gradually she developed more satisfying relationships and
activities that led her to feel good about herself, losing interest in her old devious strategies. Later,
Doro came to appreciate her “shadow’s” resourcefulness in finding something of what she needed
even in difficult situations.

In practice, much anxiety and depression turn out to be caused by a very common pattern often
called “the Inner Critic,” which strives to avoid even more distressing experiences and feelings
such as shame, rejection, ostracism, retaliation, humiliation, grief, powerlessness, and other kinds
of pain. The IFS approach recognizes that the Critic, a so-called Protector part, is
actually motivated by a loving desire to create happiness. However, it disregards important
realities in the here-and-now situation, often causing the very outcomes it is trying to avoid. Its
strategies are limited to criticizing (some version of “You’re stupid/ugly/bad”) and invidious
comparisons to other people, in strenuous attempts to motivate the person to “improve” or to
refrain from dangerous activities, so that he or she can have a good life. Unnoticed by the
desperate Inner Critic, the unfortunate side effects include anxiety lest one fail to prove the critic
wrong (chronic or recurring anxiety, because the critic by its nature keeps raising the bar if one
does manage to “prove it wrong” about one assertion), and depression if one caves in and
believes the critiques.

Here are two SoulCollage® cards made by a client (herself a psychotherapist). The first depicts
the “stern and indifferent” Inner Critic trailed by a panting and dejected bunny, which is at the
effect of the critic and which, in her IFS therapy, the client came to see as an Exile (an unwanted
painful, vulnerable feeling). Another of her cards shows the miserable bunny alone on the barren
surface of the moon.

The second card here, made after a year of IFS therapy, shows the Critic pattern (the stern teacher
and ostrich and the Exile pupil in their crosshairs) in the background. Between it and a warm
group of well-tended bunnies is a helmeted figure sheltering the rabbits next to his heart. This
figure enacts what was actually happening more and more in the woman’s inner life: what IFS
therapists and theorists Jay Earley, PhD and Bonnie Weiss, MFT call the Inner Champion, who
does not fight the Inner Critic but simply keeps offering powerful acceptance and support.

In IFS, the Critic too is questioned with genuine interest about the good it is trying to do for the
person and the feared outcomes it is trying to avoid by criticizing. It is sincerely thanked for the
good effects it has had. Virtually always it then expresses exhaustion in its role and will say (if
asked) what role it would now prefer to play in the person’s life. This tends to work much better
than counter-measures that actually only keep the critic alive, such as fighting the critic or trying
to destroy it. It has the fierce love of a mother for the Exile it is trying to protect, and will not stop
what it’s doing as long as it thinks that Exile is not yet healed. The SoulCollage® process--
collaging cards that turn out to represent these personality parts, and/or dialoging with the
collaged images—helps people visualize the parts, thus aiding integration and healing.
3. Identification of recurring themes and patterns.

This is the name of the game in SoulCollage®. First of all, each card has a theme which, though
often not apparent while making it, comes into clear focus over time, and which represents a
particular cluster of emotions, intuitions, values, beliefs about the world and one’s place in it, and
action tendencies.

Second, the act of making a card, then perhaps naming it, then letting it describe itself through the
I Am One Who process, and finally doing self-interpreted readings with it over time, serves to
raise one’s awareness of recurring patterns of behavior, thought, fantasy, and feeling in one’s life.
Simply keeping a card out where one will often see it yields a rich harvest of insights into one’s
patterns and ongoing hints as to further developments in areas of interest.

Third, the four suits in the classic SoulCollage® deck (which can contain any number of cards)
each contains a cluster of themes in four different areas of one’s life: personality parts
(Committee), significant individuals, animals, or places forming one’s personal network
(Community), body and instinctual or emotional energies (Companions), and those archetypes
of the collective unconscious which are particularly salient to the card-maker (Council).
Archetypes range from those related to the body, social roles, and human capacities (Man,
Woman, (Grand)Mother, (Grand)Father, Son, Daughter; Hero/Heroine, Temptress, Seducer,
Beggar, Artist, Trickster, Clown, Teacher, Healer, Musician, Singer, Dancer, Poet, Actor, Thinker,
Medicine Man/Woman, Dreamer, Medium, Shaman, Oracle, Warrior, Protector), to the creatures
of myth and legend from all centuries and regions of the world (nymphs, faeries, pixies, trolls,
monsters, goblins, vampires, dakinis; spirits of place like Pan, the West Wind, sirens, Rhinemaidens;
unicorns, giants, dwarves, centaurs), to the Divine in all its manifold different forms and
attributes from spiritual and religious traditions throughout history.

These archetypes appear in dreams, fantasies, and works of art of all kinds, and in the outer world
in other people, or societal movements, or acts of nature that grip us powerfully, transforming us
in positive or negative ways. They also express in recognizable behavioral tendencies that can
easily pattern an entire human life. As such, the archetypes present us as therapists with many
opportunities to help them express in positive form.

Dave (story above) pulled the volcano card upside down, saying, “Ooh! Wow!” In his rendition,
it said, “I am one who is full of energy.” Dave said, “I can’t see if it’s being used in a positive or
negative way—it’s just overwhelming.” Turning it right side up: “It’s more fearsome, now that I
see the ground is down here. Exploding. This is my father.” Here we see how an archetype—we
might call this one something like Power of Nature—can be experienced through a person whom
we know, i.e., who is influential in our Community.

Turning the card upside down again, Dave said, “This way is awe-inspiring and fascinating—it’s
not good or bad, it’s just there. Attractive and scary at the same time.” He experienced his
father’s rages as overwhelming and profoundly intimidating, although there were also good times
in their relationship. At any rate it was the fascinating and awe-inspiring manifestation that
encouraged him, “Feel the energy in yourself and make use of it in a productive way.”

It is tempting to speculate that Dave had been trying not only to quiet his fear by overeating, but
also to stuff down the rage he feared might destroy his father or their relationship. Certainly he
realized that he often relapsed into overeating when angry at his wife and not feeling free to say
so and state clearly what he needed and wanted. Having learned over the months that his wife--
by contrast with his father—actually welcomed his asserting himself by saying how he felt about
things, he went on after the SoulCollage® reading to talk about pursuing current interests of his
own (i.e., using more of his own power?) instead of almost always doing things that would keep
him physically with her in the same room.

The procedure of SoulCollage® readings in which unseen cards are drawn at random is based on
the principle of synchronicity as seen by Jung, who called it “an acausal connecting principle”
and saw it as one indicator of the interconnectedness of the collective unconscious. Two
relatively rare events, neither of which has caused the other (the asking of a question and the
blind choice of a particular SoulCollage® card), occur simultaneously in a manner that has
meaning for the observer. One might say the universe is seen as being patterned in part by
meaning, not solely by factors noted in either theoretical or applied physics.

Jung saw what he called the collective unconscious as the matrix of the unconscious mind of
individuals, as well as a brewing ground for future national and world events, which it
foreshadows. In Jung’s own day, for instance, he observed motifs in the dreams of individuals
that seemed to forecast the advent of World War II years before there was conscious awareness of
such a possibility. Many such events are more positive, for instance some possible outcomes of
the current global paradigm shift affecting societal norms and institutions around the world--
agricultural, financial, governmental, political, social, technical, commercial, faith-based,
scientific, educational, and medical. All such events of course profoundly affect our own lives
and those of our clients.

Seena Frost and others have come to see SoulCollage® as one of many spontaneous grassroots
social movements that she now believes have potential to contribute in a positive way to the
paradigm shift. A beautiful hour-long video for the public has just been produced. It is both a
wonderful introduction to SoulCollage® and a recording of a community SoulCollage® reading
on how best to contribute to the paradigm shift, done at the 2011 International Conference of
SoulCollage® Facilitators and Trainers: https://vimeo.com/47655192

The SoulCollage® vision of wholeness includes the concept of the One and the Many at several
levels: many energies or personality parts make up one person, many individuals make a
community, and there are countless archetypes within the scarcely imaginable boundless One of
the collective unconscious. Each of these particulars, says Frost, “need to be recognized as
manifestations of the One, of Source,” which is seen as being beyond form, the matrix of All That
Is, and is often seen as divine. She has made an image of Indra’s Net on which newly-trained
facilitators sometimes glue a jewel, and says, “From this place we know each person is an integral
thread in the Larger Story.”

Similarly, IFS works to help the many personality parts within one Self cooperate in harmony
under its leadership. Coherence therapy posits that, even given the “bizarre and truly strange”
permutations of completely contradictory yet simultaneously-held mental “constructions of
meaning for any one item of experience” (Depth-Oriented Brief Therapy, p. 94), every unwanted
behavior or feeling precisely expresses a coherent set of beliefs, memories, and emotional truth.
In other words, all personality parts coherently express the whole, and the whole enterprise of
coherence therapy aims to discover exactly how this is true in any given person.

4. Discussion of past experience (developmental focus).
Many people use SoulCollage® to help them work through painful past experiences which have
impacted their development. Dave, the client whose story began this article, used SoulCollage®
and psychotherapy to resolve a problem handed down by his father (whose own father had not
been able to be emotionally present with him): how best to develop beyond narcissistic wounding.
As a feature editor of the monthly online newsletter of the 1500-member SoulCollage®
Facilitators Circle, I helped a woman recount her remarkable story of healing her difficult
relationship with her mother with the help of both SoulCollage® and Bert Hellinger’s Family
Constellation Work.

Often the process of making the cards itself seems to aid working-through. “Accidents” during
the process and other exigencies imposed by the materials being used often turn out to express
significant truths about the SoulCollager’s process. One man was on a spiritual path and tended to
focus on non-ordinary states, while his physical health and financial situation were gravely
compromised. After the difficult death of a family member who had also suffered from the family
legacy of conflict, he made a series of three cards (over as many months) on the theme of a deep
split he felt between the distant realms of lush, glorious fullness of life—where he believed his
deceased relative to be—and the barren desert of despair in which he found himself most of the
time.

Each card showed a barren landscape and a lush one, separated from each other by an expanse of
outer space, flecked with distant stars. Carefully he cut narrow strips of color and glued them on
either side of the space area, to demarcate it from both types of landscape. He was not used to
making things with his hands and was bothered that the space area and the strips of color on the
last card came out thinner than those on the prior cards.

On exploration, though, we found that the stark divisions in his inner world were thinning out as
well. He went through two more heavy bouts of grieving, then began to take better care of
himself physically, and his health improved. He found a job, then a better job where he was
promoted. A year later, calm and happy, he said the sense of desolation was gone.

5. Focus on interpersonal relations.
The SoulCollage® suits each represent different kinds of relationship, within oneself
(Committee), with one’s network of significant individuals (Community), with one’s own body
energies, which present themselves (via a guided meditation) as animal companions in the
Companions suit, and with callings or beings greater than oneself (Council).
Many questions people ask during SoulCollage® readings are about relationships. In a
psychotherapy context, just the one SoulCollage® step of framing a question can yield useful
information about a client’s interpersonal surround.

The full particulars of the following case (not given here for reasons of space and confidentiality)
also go partway towards showing how, in the hands of a therapist, SoulCollage® offers
opportunities to act on Ecker & Hulley’s “conviction that the unconscious constructs
generating the client’s problem are immediately accessible and changeable from the start of
therapy.” [emphasis mine] Early change also seems to require that certain other of Shedler’s
common factors be operating, such as a working therapeutic alliance (p. 104), which was not
present in this case.

A 19-year-old girl was referred for outpatient treatment as being in danger of relapse into an
addiction to pills and heroin after two prior stays in rehab. In the first session, Eve chatted on
about her life (school, boys, babysitting), her strategies for avoiding using drugs (watching TV,
eating protein), and the greater ease of staying at her father’s than at her mother’s (where she
lived after their divorce) because he trusted her to make her own decisions. When she said, “I’m
just rattling on here,” the therapist presented some SoulCollage® cards and asked, “What would
you ask a really wise person about something that’s important to you?” Eve’s question: “Why am
I so dependent on my parents?” Indeed she was strikingly so for her age, under a faux-mature
persona.

To make a long story short, this question alone pointed to the relationship with her parents as a
major trigger for Eve’s drug use. Eve came to the third therapy session so wasted on drugs that
she was barely coherent and nodding out. All she would say, when asked, was that she had
become enraged at her mother for wanting to send her to her father’s again. Close questioning of
Eve’s mother revealed her ex-husband’s history of incest-like behavior and his heavy drinking.
However, mother was not able (in her own work with another therapist) to frame other ways to
arrange time for herself; father had refused every prior offer of therapy; and Eve was not able
even to come to therapy sessions sober. Since funds were available for a long-term stay at a good
rehab facility, that option was chosen as most likely to help Eve get clean and sober and
emancipate from deleterious family patterns.
6. Focus on the therapy relationship.

Like other approaches which help us attune to clients and help them feel seen and understood
here and now, SoulCollage® assists this first by revealing things about the client which even she
might not fully know, but which carry a felt sense of truth when they arise. The more receptive
we are as therapists, the more fully we perceive what’s going on in a SoulCollage® reading or
card-making session.

Second, and relevant to the above: like IFS and the coherence therapy of Ecker & Hulley,
SoulCollage® at its core whole-heartedly accepts the fundamental goodness of every psychic
content, even if the form in which it’s currently expressing is shadowed or distorted and is better
not acted out as is. This therapist orientation is beneficial for clients. Third, as a tool for selfexploration,
SoulCollage® can keep the therapist aware of her own undercurrents in the exchange
with clients, which if worked with cannot help but improve things in the room. I for one find all
these factors to be profoundly facilitative of the therapy relationship.
7. Exploration of fantasy life.

By now it may be apparent that SoulCollage® offers the benefits both of art therapy and of
seamless compatibility with talk-therapy methods in exploring both the client’s fantasy life and
one’s own. As just one example, Doro (thieving shadow who “believes I have to steal what I
need”) was a therapist who explored in her own therapy some of her fantasies related to this thief
pattern and found, to her dismay, that her clients were for her an important, if covert, source of
narcissistic supply. Going on to discover her abundant inner reserves of nourishment and wellbeing,
she became able to work productively with clients whose issues had previously been
beyond her reach.

REFERENCES
Earley, Jay. (2009). Self-Therapy: A Step-by-Step Guide to Creating Wholeness. . . Using IFS, A
New Cutting-Edge Psychotherapy. Minneapolis: Mill City Press.
Ecker, Bruce & Hulley, Laurel. (1996). Depth-Oriented Brief Therapy: How to Be Deep When
You Were Trained to Be Brief—and Vice-Versa. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers.
Frost, Seena B. SoulCollage® Evolving: An Intuitive Collage Process for Self-Discovery and
Community. (2010). Santa Cruz, CA: Hanford Mead Publishers, Inc.
Shedler, Jonathan. (2006a). That Was Then, This Is Now: An Introduction to Contemporary
Psychodynamic Therapy.
Shedler, Jonathan. (2010). The efficacy of psychodynamic psychotherapy. American Psychologist,
65(2), 98-109.

Katherine L. Ziegler, PhD (CA Lic#PSY11596), a psychologist since 1980, conducts a
psychotherapy and coaching practice in Oakland, CA. She has made art and used art with clients
for decades. Since training as a SoulCollage® Facilitator in 2009, she has used SoulCollage®
with psychotherapy clients, in personal-growth workshops with individuals, and in team-building
with work teams. For two years, as a feature editor of the online newsletter for the 1500+-
member, worldwide SoulCollage® Facilitators Circle, she has helped practitioners tell their
stories of SoulCollage®-assisted transformation. Many SoulCollage® facilitators are
psychotherapists, licensed counselors, or coaches.