The Courage to Know and to Become Oneself: A Psychodynamic Journey
By George Hull
Editor, Pastoral Report - The Newsletter of the College of Pastoral Supervision & Psychotherapy
“We make out of the quarrel with others, rhetoric, but of the quarrel with ourselves, poetry.”
- William Butler Yeats
The psychodynamic approach begins with a simple but unsettling realization: we are often strangers to ourselves. We do not fully know the person we see in the mirror.
We tend to think of ourselves as rational individuals, fully aware of why we think, feel, and act as we do. The psychodynamic tradition, however, suggests that much of human experience lies beyond our conscious awareness. Hidden from view lies a deeper psychological world shaped by hidden desires, unresolved conflicts, fears, memories, and relational patterns. These dynamics influence us long after we believe we have moved beyond them. From this perspective, what we observe outwardly reveals only a fraction of the inner life shaping our behavior.
The Foundations of Depth Psychology
The psychodynamic approach emerged primarily through the work of Sigmund Freud and was later expanded by thinkers such as Carl Jung and other depth psychologists. Although the theory has developed considerably over time, it continues to rest upon Freud’s central premise: we are influenced by unconscious processes outside immediate awareness.
The psychodynamic perspective suggests that early relationships leave enduring emotional impressions. Early experiences of attachment, love, rejection, approval, shame, and abandonment become integrated into the very fabric of our developing personality.
These formative experiences continue to influence how we:
Seek connection and manage vulnerability
Respond to conflict and interpret the world
Navigate present encounters through past expectations
In this sense, the past remains active within the present. The self is not a fixed identity fully known to itself, but a deeply layered reality. Operating out of sight is an inner world of emotional associations that, while they appear irrational on the surface, make sense within the deeper logic of the psyche.
Conflict, Defense, and Meaning
Central to psychodynamic thought is the idea that each of us experiences internal conflict. We carry competing desires, fears, values, and emotional needs that are not easily reconciled. Because some emotions feel threatening to our sense of self, we develop defenses against them.
These defense mechanisms protect us from psychological pain, yet they distance us from greater self-awareness. We may:
Intellectualize the grief of rejection rather than feel it directly
Project unwanted feelings onto those around us
Bury painful memories beneath busyness, perfectionism, or withdrawal
The psychodynamic approach does not view these responses as moral failures. Instead, it sees them as attempts by the psyche to preserve stability during emotional difficulty. Behavior is rarely meaningless. Recurring, self-defeating patterns reveal tensions within our inner world that have not yet been fully understood. In this view, all behavior carries meaning, even when its purpose lies outside conscious awareness.
The Role of Relationships and Growth
The psychodynamic tradition also emphasizes the phenomenon of transference. Each of us carries emotional expectations formed in early childhood into present encounters. Feelings once associated with formative figures may be unconsciously projected onto partners, friends, authority figures, and therapists.
In therapy, the relationship itself becomes a space where these longstanding relational patterns emerge and can be examined with greater clarity. Rather than focusing only on symptom reduction, psychodynamic therapy seeks a deeper understanding of the person’s emotional inner life.
Growth involves:
Developing robust self-awareness
Learning to tolerate emotional truth
Entering relationships freely rather than repeating unconscious patterns
At its core, the psychodynamic approach is concerned with the lifelong task of becoming more fully oneself. Such self-understanding requires courage. Genuine self-knowledge often brings us into contact with uncertainty, vulnerability, grief, and contradiction. Yet it is precisely through this process of reflection and encounter that a more integrated sense of self becomes possible.
In this sense, identity is never fully given to us in advance; it is something we continually discover.
“We know what we are, but know not what we may be.”
- Hamlet
Introduction to Psychodynamic Theory and Therapy (for beginners)
The CPSP Pastoral Report is grateful to Alina for this video, "Introduction to Psychodynamic Theory and Therapy" (for beginners). Alina is a psychoanalyst in training studying psychodynamic theory.
