"The patient is always right - psychologically right - may be said to be the Golden Rule for a Jungian analyst; and perhaps no quality is more demanded of the analyst than the humility and the capacity for self-effacement and self-criticism which its observance requires. His task is solely that of mediator, translator; the patient's companion in the journey into his own depths. He is always to follow; never to lead. He may interpret, amplify - but interpret and ampflify the patient's own material in a fashion that wins the patient's own assent." (Fr. Victor White)



I doubt you'd be reading my website if you were not already trusting an impulse in yourself, a courageous one at that, to seek help for yourself and your relationships. You probably sense there's more possible for you and in working with individual and couples, I trust their sense of what seems missing in their lives. Your therapy begins with your very willingness to follow that felt sense that there is another way for you and to enter into a helpful relationship.

My offices are both in San Francisco and Petaluma, California and I know an important part of this process is finding a therapist that you will be comfortable with in your work. Usually you will know a "good fit" after a few sessions by asking yourself questions such as: Do I feel comfortable with this person, intellectually, emotionally and perhaps spiritually? Do they seem to understand me? Do they begin to identify my issues?  Do they help me in various ways, perhaps through dream material, to begin to deepen my search for more lasting solutions? I trust you to know and discern who is the right person for you. Working together, whether as an individual or couple, we begin to find ways of balancing your strengths and vulnerabilities. We listen together for the guidance that will often come from the margins of our awareness and in the difficult places where you are struggling the most. 

Part of what we do is to determine what seems out of balance in your life and relationships. Balance seems so simple at one level. A few rocks carefully placed one upon the other.   A child wavering on a bicycle, skateboard, surfboard, or balance beam. A waiter with a tray of dishes. A Federer forehand. A ship at full sail. A mom carrying her child. An elderly person trailing a walker.  Balance! But how about matters getting out of balance in life? Not getting along with your partner. Arguing about the same issues. Feeling you are not fulfilling your unique self.  Wanting to understand your dreams and how they influence your relationships and life's goals. Trying to find meaning and making sense out of life. So much to sort out at different phases in our lives. We all seek to find our unique balance among the various influences in our lives.

For some forty years as a certified Jungian analyst, ordained clergy, and marriage and family therapist, I've attempted to help individuals, couples, and marriages find and/or restore the balance necessary for a more fulfilling life. I specialize in including unconscious processes, particularly, dreams in the healing, making "whole" process, along with our conscious efforts. In the course of some eighteen years, I also served as a provost/faculty member at Pacifica Graduate Institute working with graduate students in psychology and the humanities.

Ideally, we live well-balanced lives, physically, mentally and spiritually. However, that's not always the case. Life has a way of throwing us out of kilter. The old ways of living our lives, the way we relate to others, or seek satisfactions in life, may no longer work as we move through different stages in our lives. Symptoms appear as persistent cries that requires attention. Trouble in our relationships, feeling down or anxious, bothersome thoughts, emotional reactions to illness or to biological imbalances, or unusual behaviors, appear as voices crying in the wilderness of our lives.

We know we need to find another way. Hitting the gravel along the highway won't do, although it provides the warning we need. How do we regain our balance? How do we find our particular path at various moments and stages in our lives? Who or what may be the source of our help?

I believe together we can find another way. One of the insights of C.G. Jung is that the psyche, the animated totality of our being, seeks to find balance. The other side of what has been stressed in our lives often seeks to be heard. We may be made whole by what we've neglected, and learned to fear. By welcoming the rejected in our lives we may discover a new direction. 

As a certified Jungian analyst, and licensed Marriage Family Therapist, I work with you to draw on those resources that will help you find again the balance you need to live your particular life. Between opposing forces, we look for how another way, a third way, is attempting to offer us a new path. By carefully attending to the dynamics of the psyche and our relations, often displayed in living spontaneous images, we understand how the dynamic psyche seeks to make us whole, bringing healing to ourselves, our relationships and to our connection with whom or what ultimately matters to us.

How does that happen? Together we look at what doesn't seem to be working well. What are our symptoms trying to tell us?  We look at the history of the issue, its origins and developments.  We then use the interactions between us, your dreams, your relational conflicts, daydreams, symptoms, intuitions, the rational and the non-rational, your religious and or spiritual resources, to find immediate and practical ways to help you restore balance in your life. (Of course, "out of balance" could be that we are so well adjusted to the norms of society that our uniqueness is greatly compromised!)

Whether on the tennis court, running, writing or in my private practice, or with my family, I seek daily to find a balance between peace and adventure.

Put simply, you tell me the story of what's not working. Together, we listen in a variety of ways, to how a new creation, a new story is forming in your life and relationships. We gather around that new story, celebrate its appearance and allow it to solidify in your thinking, imagining and behavior. You leave, having learned, how to best author the new stories of your ever challenging life.

As a solution-focused therapist and Jungian psychoanalyst and clergy with years of pastoral experience, my goal is to help you uncover your true potential. I want to help you learn how to better help yourself with resources that you may not yet have fully used. While we can't change difficult situations of the past, we can work together to better understand and resolve how they are still distorting your present life. By applying complementary therapy approaches and techniques, we will unearth long-standing behavior patterns or negative perceptions that may be holding you back from experiencing a more fulfilling and meaningful life. A story or mythology, a basic individual or relational pattern, that you've developed about yourself may be ineffective for a new stage in your life. Together we look for the "new way" waiting to guide you during the next phase of your life and relationships.

If you're looking for additional support and guidance through a difficult situation or you're ready to move in a new direction in your life, I look forward to working with you to achieve your goals.

I've been in private practice for more than 35 years and have had the benefit of good teachers and training.  My  own teaching, writing and practice has focused on the dynamic relationship between psychology and religious/spiritual insights.

To begin with, we will assess what seems out of balance and discover all the resources available to help you restore your life to a new way of being. I will use what I've learned and know to help you unfold your own unique life. I will  try to do this in a caring and compassionate way, trusting that, while using what we both know, there are possibilities available to us that will often surprise us, and move us toward deep resolutions.

If you think, imagine or have the intuition that I could be of help, call or email me for an individual or couple initial session. Please email me at charlesasher3@gmail.com or call me at (805-705-2451).