My earliest memory is a dream. To this day, I can recall the feelings, scenery, and events that transpired while I was asleep in great detail. For as long as I can remember I have been endlessly curious as to why I retain with such clarity moments that did not “really” occur, whereas I struggle to remember the actual events in my childhood except in disjointed fragments. I suppose this dream was the earliest seed planted to spark my interest in the mysteries of the human mind at a young age. I discovered Carl Jung before high school and decided to major in psychology upon taking an intro psych course at the local community college during my senior year. My academic and professional work since then has provided a deep foundational understanding of psychology and its intersection with philosophy, most thoroughly explored through my involvement in psychotherapy research. To this day, I have come across no realm of knowledge that sparks and renews my curiosity as endlessly as inquiries of dreams, déjà vu, synchronicity, and patterns in human consciousness. I am applying to Pacifica as my top choice in Counseling Psychology MA programs because my values align quite perfectly with Pacifica’s mission to help students creatively learn and harvest the gifts of the human imagination.

To illustrate my background and what I can bring to Pacifica, I will focus on the specific parts of my CV that afforded me the most discernable reasons for choosing to apply to this program in particular. Despite my ample undergraduate experience studying, teaching, researching and mentoring in psychology, most of my undergrad experience ultimately showed me what I did not wish to pursue further. Much of the quantitative research I spent hours collecting data for, learning to write about, and helping others disseminate at conferences kept me interested only on a mere surface level. I learned so much throughout those years of research, but mostly about the process of research itself; the content was nowhere near what I felt was enough to answer the questions that remained. Specifically, my extensive research of empirically supported therapies such as CBT, as well as my own time with CBT therapists, left me trying to find a huge piece of the treatment puzzle that was missing. In psychiatry, too, I have watched providers treat the symptoms of myself and those closest to me, while across the board the internal happenings underpinning the manifestation of such symptoms remains largely unexplored. In all of my undergraduate experience, mentoring high school students was the most rewarding job I held. I believe that is because of the one-on-one nature of mentorship. I realize now that I am most motivated for a task when I can really help individuals achieve their goals in a tangible, individual format. 

I attended my first international gathering of clinicians/researchers in Dublin during the summer after my graduation. I was accepted as a speaker to present my honors thesis (it was later published, and I have provided that publication as my writing sample). While attending, I met a professor whose research on Interpersonal Reconstructive Therapy (IRT) struck a meaningful chord in me. IRT, Dr. Critchfield explained, is often a therapy for clients with severe psychological disturbances who have notably resisted improvement after years of hospitalizations, medications, and persistently unsuccessful therapeutic interventions. IRT takes a different approach than most widely practiced therapies today, foundationally informed by an individualized treatment plan analyzing the most formative years of a client’s life: their lived childhood experience, and the attachment patterns formed as a result. According to IRT, uncovering the client’s internalized representations of important others is paramount to understanding and overcoming persistent psychological roadblocks to wellness. As I listened to Dr. Critchfield speak, it seemed obvious that this conceptualization of human disfunction dove deeper than the philosophies informing short, symptom-focused treatments. Indeed, IRT’s internalized attachment figures seemed to be like the unconscious archetypes Jung named animus and anima, self and the shadow. Those parts of ourselves are always there, but we mostly overlook how deeply interwoven they are in our lived experience. These universally true but seldom acknowledged pieces of the puzzle go unnoticed due to society’s systematic neglect of the deepest parts of the psyche. Finally, I saw a glimmer of a deeper truth in psychotherapy research.    

I reached out to Dr. Critchfield and began volunteering as a research assistant in his lab. I spent hours and hours coding therapy sessions unlike any I had previously encountered. Unlike the traditional CBT sessions for clients with MDD and GAD I coded previously, there was undeniably deep work in the IRT sessions, and the coding was more qualitative, nuanced, and complex as a result. In an effort to miss no important moment, every symptom, self-concept, and interpersonal turn of talk was attributed a valence and past/present code. Internal representations of attachment figures, coworkers, random cashiers, and even parts of the client’s own self were worthy of tracking. To code properly, coders read detailed case formulation of each client, keeping them handy in order to inform which symptoms, self-talk, and interpersonal conceptualizations were “red” or “green” based on treatment goals. I saw how the clients changed over time, as I was assigned the case from start to finish. Witnessing those transformations remains some of the most profound work I ever contributed to. This volunteer experience provided me with so much insight into the complexity of the deeply rooted narratives in humans that appear in every aspect of life, especially moments not easily explained. People act in ways that make no sense until the unconscious is granted the attention it demands. Only when the dark is brought to light can an integrated personality fully emerge, and this process was nowhere near straightforward or the same for every client. Things change when people go through darkness, not when symptoms are treated alone. My time coding IRT solidified my commitment to help people go deeper than symptom reduction.

I am applying to a MA Counseling program to obtain the training needed to become a licensed counselor. This program is my first choice because of Pacifica’s impressive reputation paired with an unparalleled curriculum in the kind of therapy I wish to practice. I have studied much of Jung’s work, and continue to explore his endless material as I grow professionally and personally. I have studied other theories and modalities, researched therapist-patient matching and outcomes, and been a client of philosophies underpinning therapies from CBT to psychodynamic. I have seen numerous psychiatrists and have been an ambivalent recipient of psych medications since my first major depressive episode as a 17 year old. Still, nothing I have learned, experienced, or reluctantly swallowed has nurtured my mind and spirit with life’s deepest psychological truths as discovering my own psyche with the guidance of Carl Jung. I have years of notebooks filled with journal entries, dream logs, and efforts to uncover the parts of myself that come forth with a little attention and a lot of time. My journey of self-discovery is far from complete, but I feel ready to begin channeling this inner work to the outer world. My commitment to help people can be achieved by practicing the type of inner work I have found most valuable in my continuing navigation of selfhood. This happens to be the mission of Pacifica. It would be an honor to learn with you.