As a psychotherapist I have had the unique honor of listening while many people learn that where they suffer the most often reveals what they are in need of the most. Each of us loses out on so much of our potential by avoiding what the suffering points us toward. Through observing many people in their therapeutic process and as informed by my research I have come to desire a new discourse with the patterns of our human experience. One thing is clear: The process of therapy involves, in large part, interrogating the patterns in our lives that we would rather not look at, light and dark, and in so doing invite us to begin to redefine our suffering and with it reimagine ourselves.
About
John
John is a depth-psychotherapist, who received a Master’s in clinical psychology and a Doctorate in Jungian psychology. He and his wife, Leila-Scott Price, own and operate the integrative, wellness collective The Center for the Healing Arts and Sciences. John is also on the faculty of The Jung Center, in Houston, and Esalen, in Big Sur. He lectures and teaches classes in subjects ranging from parenting to ecstatic experience and music, from William Blake to Consciousness, the psychology of fame to Sex, Drugs & Rock and Roll. John has traveled the country speaking and consulting with various groups to help listeners and participants make more sense of the chaos that is interwoven with our lives. Before all of this, he was a professional musician. John commented, “I have had the, sometimes, unfortunate experience of smelling the backstage rooms found in some of the best-known venues across the country Seattle, San Diego, New York, Nashville, San Francisco, Pittsburgh, Los Angeles, Houston, Dallas, and Austin to name a few. We traveled by car, truck, plane, tour bus, and broken bus. We loved some shows, hated others, canceled some and sometimes just didn’t show. I was living the life of which I had always dreamed.” In the midst of a career and experiencing the wonders of living like a traveling gypsy, John experienced an even greater wonder, the birth of his son, and he stopped touring and found that a home in the academic study of psychology provided him a landscape to explore his interests of people, philosophy, art, and spirituality.
On the tail end of his formal academic experience, John wrote a personally meaningful dissertation that incorporated his understanding of life as a musician together with his understanding of depth-psychology. He examined fame as a symbol to better understand the process of adaptation, idealization, and individuation, which is the psychological principle Jung believed to be the ultimate goal of human beings. John asserted that examining the renowned can bring forth meaningful psychological patterns within what Jung called the collective, to which we all belong, and by consciously examining the collective, one could become more aware of deeper aspects of his or her psyche. Whether on the level of the individual, or the collective, who we all exalt to the status of celebrity—sports stars, movie stars, music idols—and what qualities they reflect back to us, suggests as much about those who do the projecting as it does of those objects upon whom the projection is cast. As a result of this in-depth work, Dr. John Price has become an expert in the field of the study of the renown, whether in the form of the stars for all the world to admire or in the eyes of those who want to worship the stars on the stage and the damage that process may cause when this quest is to fill a need that cannot be filled from the admiration of others or from admiring others but can only be accomplished when we reconnect with the unique self that indwells each of us.
John Price’s unique life, coupled with his passion and his wisdom has led into his life as a psychotherapist, practitioner, and presenter using all he has learned in the many iterations of his life. Music remains important to him, he continues his return to the stage and studio to play with his band, Spirit & the Trickster, but it no longer takes center stage; that place is saved for his work as psychotherapist, teacher, and co-founder of The Center for the Healing Arts and Sciences, and importantly, father to their beloved son and daughter.