From schema to symbol
A dialogue between Jung and Schema Focused Therapy
Introduction – In the house of many rooms
There were voices living inside me that I didn’t understand. Some whispered in fear, others shouted with stern conviction. They told me I was too much—or not enough. That I had to please, perform or disappear. For years, I tried to silence those voices. I believed they were working against me. That they stood in the way of my freedom.
I grew up in a family where unpredictability and emotional absence set the tone. Love was conditional. Safety fragile. What I felt didn’t count—or was ridiculed. As a child I adapted, again and again. I learned how to survive, but I didn’t learn how to be myself.
The schemas I developed—deep-rooted beliefs about myself, the world and others—became the foundation of houses I built, but never truly felt at home in. The modes I lived in were survival layers: the Vulnerable Child within me went into hiding, the Punitive Parent took the floor and the Protector sometimes turned off the lights.
Years later, after a relationship that shattered me in places I hadn’t even known existed—with a woman who seemed to see me, but in reality, slowly erased me—I returned to therapy. Schema Focused Therapy. I wanted to understand what had happened. What I had allowed. And what I needed to become whole again.
That’s when Carl Gustav Jung appeared—once again. The right person, at the right moment. In his language, I found a different kind of knowing. Not schemas, but symbols. Not diagnoses, but stories. His ideas touched something in me that had lived in silence for a long time. And when I brought those two worlds together—the structure of schema focused therapy and the depth of Jung—something began to stir. In me. Between me. Through me.
This essay is an exploration of that inner encounter. A journey along parts, voices and images. Not a plea for one approach over the other, but an invitation to hear both. Because healing begins when we make space for everything that lives within us.
The Child as bearer of truth
In both schema focused therapy and depth psychology, the Child appears as a central figure in the inner landscape. The Child carries the memory of dependency, innocence, longing and pain — but also of vitality, playfulness, authenticity and originality.
In schema focused therapy, the Vulnerable Child mode is the place where feelings of abandonment, shame, helplessness and loneliness are experienced. It is the part of the personality that, in childhood, did not feel seen, heard or safe. This mode often manifests through intense emotional reactions that seem ‘age-inappropriate,’ but in fact point back to an earlier phase of life in which fundamental needs went unmet.
In Jungian psychology, the Child also appears as an archetypal figure: the Divine Child, an image Jung recognized in dreams, myths and religious traditions. This archetype expresses not only vulnerability, but also deep potential. The Divine Child is both small and powerful — an embodiment of future, renewal and the possibility of transformation. In fairy tales, it is often the insignificant, abandoned child who ends up saving the world. Not in spite of their vulnerability, but because of it.
Where the Vulnerable Child becomes visible in concrete behaviors and emotional states, the Divine Child reveals itself through dreams, intuitions and symbolic imagery. And yet, both touch the same existential layer: the human experience of receptivity, dependence and the longing to be recognized for who we truly are. The Child continues to live on as an inner figure — sometimes silent, sometimes screaming for attention — and is thus a key to healing.
The inner counterforce – shame, judgment and the path to integration
Within the inner world of every person exist voices that judge, correct or reject. These voices often carry the echoes of the past: words once spoken by parents, caregivers or authority figures, which have settled in the psyche and taken on a life of their own.
Schema focused therapy refers to this as the Punitive Parent mode. This mode expresses itself through harsh, rejecting thoughts about the self. It punishes, minimizes or humiliates. “You’re no good.” “You’re overreacting.” “You should be ashamed.” Such messages may feel painfully familiar to those who, as children, had little room to express their emotions or needs. The Punitive Parent acts as a psychological survivor: it tries, through severity, to shield the vulnerable part from further rejection. But in doing so, it hardens, shuts down and suppresses life.
In Jungian psychology, a similar figure appears in the form of the Shadow. This encompasses everything the conscious ego does not want to be or dares not acknowledge. Aggression, jealousy, shame, sexual impulses, hunger for power — but also strength, anger and truth may reside in the shadow. What is denied a place in the daylight of the ego sinks into the unconscious. But it does not disappear. It lives on — in projection, in destructive behavior, in internal rejection.
Both the Punitive Parent and the Shadow carry deep moral weight. They confront us with all that is “not allowed” — whether imposed by upbringing, culture or inner fear. In therapeutic work, the task is not to suppress these voices, but to meet them. The goal is not to banish them, but to bring them into awareness. When the Shadow is allowed to be seen, it becomes less tyrannical. When the Punitive Parent makes space for another voice, a breath of compassion enters.
The healing answer lies not in fighting these inner counterforces, but in daring to listen to what they contain: pain, protection, rejection — and ultimately, the longing for wholeness.
The protective layer – survival as style, defense as identity
Every human being develops strategies to stay afloat in a world that is not always safe or nourishing. When fundamental needs in childhood go unmet or unacknowledged, mechanisms arise that aim to protect. Not out of ill will, but out of necessity.
In schema therapy, these strategies are categorized as Coping Modes. Think of the Detached Protector, who numbs feelings, withdraws or seeks distraction and sedation. Or the Overcompensating Protector, who controls, perfects or assumes superiority in order to avoid confronting underlying vulnerability. These modes are functional — originally developed to survive — but they can harden into rigid patterns in adulthood that isolate, alienate or undermine connection.
In Jung’s thought, similar protective layers appear in the form of archetypes such as the Hero, the Warrior or the Persona. The Hero goes into battle, overcomes obstacles and defends the vulnerable. The Persona is the mask one wears in social settings — the role we play to be accepted. These archetypes are not signs of weakness, but expressions of adaptation. They provide a sense of stability in a world full of expectations and risk.
Yet tension arises when the mask is mistaken for the core. When the protective layer becomes the only permitted layer, contact with the inner world fades. Both in schema focused therapy and in Jungian psychology, the same question emerges: Who are you without your protection? And are you willing to meet that Other — the Vulnerable Child, the Shadow, the Self?
Protection is not a fault. It is the mark of someone who learned early on to fight, flee or freeze. But where healing takes place, space emerges to lay down the shield. To let the Hero rest from constant battle. To allow the Detached Protector to no longer control everything. Then, something else can arise: presence, connection and truth.
Wholeness as inner compass – The healthy adult and the Self
Amid all the inner voices, survival strategies and unmet needs, there also lives a capacity to hold — to hold everything that arises. A part that does not judge, but discerns. That does not push away, but creates space. In schema focused therapy, this is called the Healthy Adult — the inner figure who cares for the Vulnerable Child, sets boundaries for punitive or overcompensating parts and is able to regulate without suppressing.
The Healthy Adult does not develop on its own. She is born in the work people do to understand themselves, to connect with their inner world, to recognize and transform destructive patterns. She grows in the space between impulse and action, between automatic reaction and conscious choice. And where she flourishes, something new takes root: responsibility, gentleness and humanity.
In Jung’s work, a related figure is embedded: the Self. This is not a mode or a part, but the totality of the psyche — both its center and its whole. The Self includes the conscious ego as well as the unconscious layers beneath. It holds opposites and transcends them. The Self is not something you become, but something that unfolds when you are willing to face yourself — in light and shadow, in strength and vulnerability.
The Self offers direction, but not control. It calls — through dreams, images and intuition. It does not ask for perfection, but for faithfulness. In the process of individuation — the path of inner integration — the ego learns to attune itself to the Self, like an instrument tuning to an inaudible tone.
Where the Healthy Adult tends to the parts, the Self embodies the whole. One operates at the level of everyday balance, the other moves at the level of deep meaning. Both represent the capacity to be present — in life, in relationships and within one’s own inner being.
And in that presence, something wondrous occurs: what seemed fragmented becomes connected. What was cast out is welcomed home. What was painful gains meaning. It is there, in that quiet center, that a person truly meets herself.
Epilogue – The memory of inner wholeness
There is no straight path inward. No map that clearly points to where the wounds lie or how they might be healed. What I’ve learned — and continue to learn — is that the psyche is not a machine to be fixed, but a living whole that longs to be heard.
In schema focused therapy, I came to know the parts of myself I had pushed away. The voice of the Vulnerable Child, who had been waiting for me for so long. The Protector, dressed in rational arguments or cloaked in silence and withdrawal. The Punitive Parent, who spoke with the voice of my mother. By learning to recognize them, I could slowly bring them out of the shadows.
Jung taught me that the shadow itself is also part of who I am. Not to be rejected, but to be integrated. His language gave me images that were not only meant to be understood, but felt. He led me into a realm where dreams held meaning, where synchronicity offered direction and where healing was not a final destination, but a process of growing conscious presence. And above all: a process of falling and rising again.
Between the language of therapy and the symbolism of the soul, I found a space where I could meet myself. Not as a projection, but as a process. As a landscape full of voices, modes, archetypes, desires, scars — and love.
This essay is not a conclusion, but a trace. A memory of what becomes possible when we dare to do the inner work. When we dare to descend, to listen and to feel. And when we finally find the courage to be present with all our parts — not in conflict, but in relationship.
In that meeting, something sacred arises. Nothing grand. Nothing spectacular. But truthful.
And perhaps that is the beginning of true wholeness.
