Depth

depths

Depth is not merely a spatial metaphor in the depth-psychology corpus; it is the constitutive orientation of the entire enterprise. Across the major voices gathered here, the term operates simultaneously as a directional figure (the vertical against the merely horizontal), an ontological claim (that psyche possesses layers irreducible to surface presentation), and an ethical imperative (to move below the literal into the imaginal and the shadowy). McGilchrist demonstrates the term’s semantic prehistory with characteristic precision: ‘profound’ entered English metaphorically before it became literal, while ‘a deep’ migrated from the sea into ‘secret, mysterious, unfathomable’ regions of mind — establishing depth as the natural vocabulary of soul. Giegerich introduces the critical distinction between a ‘Midgard’ depth (the interior of the individual, the collective unconscious) and an ‘Utgard’ depth that refers to logical negativity and the universal within the singular — a tension that exposes how even depth psychology can remain ‘on the surface.’ Hillman, by contrast, enlists depth in service of soul-making: seeing through the literal event toward its imaginal significance, descending toward underworld perspectives. Edinger frames depth psychology as a vocation bearing unique privileges and dangers. What runs through all these positions is the shared conviction that depth names the dimension in which psyche becomes most fully itself — generative, mysterious, and transformative.

In the library 13 passages

Depth is also a quality of what we mean by soul, a quality not captured by any of our workaday categories of cognition or emotion. What is deep is profound, awe-full, mysterious, solemn, not to be confined.

McGilchrist argues that depth names an irreducible quality of soul — generative, unfathomable, and antonymous to vacuity — whose semantic history moves fluidly between the physical and the metaphysical.

McGilchrist, Iain, The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World, 2021thesis

Dig deeper with Sebastian →

The term ‘depth’ is ambiguous. What it means is determined by the orientation, whether it is horizontal or vertical. There is a ‘Midgard’ or positive version of depth (‘my interior,’ ‘the realm of the collective unconscious’) and there is an ‘Utgard’ version of depth, which refers to the distance-in-unity, within one and the same phenomenon, extending from the singular to the universal.

Giegerich argues that ‘depth’ is fundamentally ambiguous, distinguishing a psychological-interior sense from a logical-ontological sense oriented toward universality and the soul’s negative life.

Giegerich, Wolfgang, The Soul’s Logical Life Towards a Rigorous Notion of, 2020thesis

Dig deeper with Sebastian →

The calling of depth psychotherapy has unique privileges, Responsibilities, Dangers… Jungian depth psychology does indeed lead to a secret knowledge — a knowledge that is known only by the individual who has had the experience of the theophany.

Edinger characterizes depth psychology as a vocation that confers a privileged but burdensome secret knowledge, insisting it must not become a source of inflation or presumed superiority.

Edinger, Edward F., Science of the Soul: A Jungian Perspective, 2002supporting

Dig deeper with Sebastian →

soul refers to the deepen-in… that unknown component which makes meaning possible, turns events into experiences, is communicated in love, and has a religious concern.

Hillman equates the deepening movement of soul-making with depth as a psychological action — descending into meaning rather than residing in surface experience.

Hillman, James, Re-Visioning Psychology, 1975supporting

Dig deeper with Sebastian →

Soul-making, in this sense, is equated with de-literalizing — that psychological attitude that suspiciously disallows the naive and given level of events in order to search out their shadowy, metaphorical significances for soul.

Hillman defines soul-making as a movement of depth — from the literal surface of events toward their shadowy, metaphorical, and underworld dimensions.

Hillman, James, Archetypal Psychology, 1983supporting

Dig deeper with Sebastian →

Soul-making, in this sense, is equated with de-literalizing — that psychological attitude that suspiciously disallows the naive and given level of events in order to search out their shadowy, metaphorical significances for soul.

Hillman’s archetypal psychology founds its method on a descent from literal surface to metaphorical depth as the essential gesture of psychological work.

Hillman, James, Archetypal Psychology: A Brief Account, 1983supporting

Dig deeper with Sebastian →

‘Depth Psychology and the Liberation of Being,’ in Jung and Phenomenology

The bibliographic citation signals depth psychology’s sustained engagement with phenomenology as a conceptual ground for articulating the liberation inherent in psychological depth.

Hillman, James, Archetypal Psychology: A Brief Account, 1983supporting

Dig deeper with Sebastian →

‘Depth Psychology and the Liberation of Being,’ in Jung and Phenomenology

The bibliographic trace connects depth psychology to a liberatory ontological project grounded in phenomenological inquiry.

Hillman, James, Archetypal Psychology, 1983supporting

Dig deeper with Sebastian →

depth cannot be seen, because it is not spread out before our eyes, but appears to them only in foreshortened form… depth is tacitly equated with breadth seen from the side, and this is what makes it invisible.

Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenological analysis of perceptual depth — invisible as such, never simply given — resonates structurally with depth psychology’s claim that the psychic deep is not directly available to surface cognition.

Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, Phenomenology of Perception, 1962supporting

Dig deeper with Sebastian →

depth is nothing but the co-existence of the faces and the equal lines. But here again we are being given as a definition of depth what is no more than a consequence of it.

Merleau-Ponty demonstrates that depth cannot be reduced to a derived consequence of surface relations, but is itself primordial — a structural parallel to the irreducibility of psychic depth.

Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, Phenomenology of Perception, 1962supporting

Dig deeper with Sebastian →

soul refers to that unknown component which makes meaning possible, turns events into experiences, is communicated in love, and has a religious concern.

Hillman’s characterization of soul as a deepening factor — turning surface events into meaningful experiences — aligns the concept of soul implicitly with the orientation of depth.

Hillman, James, A Blue Fire: The Essential James Hillman, 1989aside

Dig deeper with Sebastian →

Related terms