Depth KC: Integrative Psychotherapy

06/09/2026

On The Spirituality of Psychoanalysis

Psychoanalysis is unique in the realm of mental health care because it is not fundamentally a simple symptomatic treatment protocol. Rather, psychoanalysis is a profound phenomenological discipline that functionally approaches enduring symptomatology as a gateway into the discipline and practice of analysis itself.

It’s not that the resolution of symptoms is secondary, or unimportant, it’s that their resolution is not generally to be found in the myopic, topical, and change-based paradigms, that often amount to little more than bouts of psychological Whac-A-Mole.

Rather, than seeking to chase away symptoms, analysis seeks to understand symptoms, and to bring awareness to the galaxy of experiences, moods, and dispositions, that support and are supported by them. Here, awareness and acceptance are the primary objectives, which birth the capacity for meaningful change, when and where such change is organically indicated, and usually then in a natural, exponential relationship to maturity and growth.

Psychoanalysis is essentially non-pathologizing in nature, in so much as it holds that all behaviors are caused, and further in understanding their causal chains, and the substrates of self-concept that give rise to them, it holds a compassionate regard for symptoms. Fundamentally, be they so-called “adaptive” or “maladaptive,” all symptoms represent a sincere effort by the psyche to maintain integrity in the face of difficulty, and are thus worthy of attention, not just to be suppressed, but to be understood and listened to.

That said, analysis itself is less of a worldview than it is a disposition toward reality, or at least a discipline that allows one to approach the real through the cultivation of curiosity, tolerance for ambiguity and unknowing, and the courage to become known (both the one’s self and to the witness of another). Here it is relevant that Freud once noted that psychoanalysis is “in essence a cure through love.” It is only love that can propel such curiosity, tolerance, and courage.

Interestingly, the field of psychoanalysis has not remained confined to the arena of mental health care. It has been broadly applied within the humanities, with its insights increasingly noted within the sciences. In this, psychoanalysis is intrinsically multidisciplinary, as it allows for one to approach the world with a deep and experiential appreciation for, awareness of, and certainly curiosity for the multiplicity of causal relationships at work forming the web of phenomena that give rise to practically anything.

Starting from the vantage of an appreciation for the transparency rendered in honest self-examination, analysands have a tendency to come to engage the world analytically, with an intuitive sense of integrated knowing which appreciates topical presentation while also paying mind to the hints and inferences that support it, waiting for them to make themselves known.

One definition of spirituality (gleaned from Google’s current conglomerated definition) is “a broad human experience centered on a search for meaning, purpose, and a sense of connection to something larger than oneself.”

Psychoanalysis is certainly “broadly human,” and it is deeply concerned with the meaning and purpose of symptoms, which eventually reveal the web of connections that not only birth and nurture those symptoms, but which ultimately give rise to the self.

The analytic approach to the self tends to discover less of an independent, autonomously sustaining thing, than a nexus of interdependent phenomena that are rarely clearly contained (and are thus connected beyond the seeming structures of the self). It is in the appreciations of these revelations that psychoanalysis unveils its place as a true psychotherapy, or as Freud put it “cure of souls,” and its ministers (the analysts) as “secular pastoral workers.”

04/12/2026

A quiet space for deep work. Where stories are spoken, meaning is made, and something new can emerge. Welcome to Depth KC.

03/17/2026

Our website is now live at www.depthkc.com

Now accepting in-person patients at our office in Overland Park, Kansas, and more broadly via Telehealth.

If you know of anyone looking for a depth-oriented psychotherapist, particularly folks that may be dealing with failed attempts at previous therapies, or who are looking for help with any of our areas of focus and specialization (see below) please share our information with them.

We work with adults (18+) and couples dealing with

• Depression, Anxiety, Emptiness & Existential Distress

• High Intelligence, Overthinking, and Deep Thinking

• Religious Trauma, Faith Deconstruction, and Spiritual Concerns

• Identity, Insight & Self-Knowing

• Psychodynamic Couples Therapy and Relationship Counseling

A private psychotherapy practice devoted to serious inner work. Rooted in psychoanalytic tradition and contemplative wisdom, Depth KC offers therapeutic care that is attentive to suffering, affirming of complexity, oriented toward meaning, and open to the possibility of real change. Dr. Joshua R. Pa...

03/13/2026

Where psychotherapy is deeper than diagnosis, moving beyond symptom chasing, to the curation of meaning, and the emergence of true agency.

03/12/2026

Depth: For When Empathy Isn’t Enough

A quiet assumption in contemporary counseling and therapy is that empathy is the primary instrument of healing.

There is truth in this.

Positive regard, careful listening, and an accepting presence can be profoundly therapeutic. Many people come to therapy having rarely been truly heard.

Yet empathy has a limit that is rarely discussed.

Its transformative power depends on something simple but difficult: the patient must actually appear as they are.

Not merely as they imagine themselves to be. Not as the story they have learned to tell about their life. But as the person who emerges in the living reality of a relationship.

When this doesn’t happen, therapy can become strangely circular. A clinician may offer empathy, care, and validation, but these responses are directed toward a narrative version of the patient, not the person whose deeper conflicts are shaping their life.

Soliciting care for a caricature of oneself is a bit like trying to scratch a feigned itch. The gesture occurs, but the relief never arrives.

At the beginning of treatment this is often unavoidable. We all come to therapy with explanations about ourselves. These stories are part of how we organize experience and preserve a sense of coherence.

But meaningful psychotherapy gradually moves beyond them.

Integrative and psychoanalytic work, in particular, is attentive to the forces that shape how a person actually appears in relationship, especially via the forces of transference, projection, and resistance.

These are not merely curiosities for interpretation. They are the mechanisms through which a person’s inner world becomes visible in the therapy itself.

In time, the patient’s characteristic patterns begin to unfold within the analytic relationship. Their expectations, defenses, anxieties, and relational habits come alive in the room.

This is where therapy deepens, and indeed, where it truly begins.

Here empathy becomes more powerful, not less.
It is directed toward the living reality of the person, rather than only toward the story they tell about themselves.

But something else becomes possible as well:
reflection, challenge, and growth in real time.

The therapist can respond not only with understanding, but with alternative ways of meeting the moment, offering the patient a new relational experience and paradigm where old expectations might once have governed the outcome.

In this sense, psychotherapy becomes less about affirming a narrative and more about encountering oneself in relationship.

Without the appearance of the real self, that is, the symptomatic, conflicted, unfinished self, therapy risks becoming an echo chamber for the very blind spots that brought someone into treatment.

Depth work begins when the person who arrives in the room is not merely described, but allowed to fully appear.

For those drawn to psychotherapy that goes beyond symptom management and toward deeper self-understanding, this kind of work may be meaningful. My private practice, Depth KC, offers depth-oriented, integrative psychotherapy for adults and couples in the Kansas City area. You can learn more about the practice at www.depthkc.com.

Dr. Joshua R. Paszkiewicz, LCPC, RN

03/11/2026

About the Therapist

Psychotherapy, for me, has never been just a job.
It is a way of being that allows me to accompany human life in its true complexity.

My path into this work has been unusually broad. I began as a contemplative seeker, exploring the wisdom of the world’s spiritual traditions—as a seminarian, a Zen monk, and a yogi. Later I trained as a clinical chaplain, then as a psychotherapist, and finally as a psychiatric and holistic nurse. Over time I have lived and worked in many roles: cleric, clinician, educator, and executive.

Across these worlds—medicine, psychology, and contemplative practice—I have encountered the same reality again and again: human beings are deeper and more complex than the frameworks we often try to place around them.

My work at Depth KC grows out of that conviction.

This practice is not built around quick diagnoses, manualized techniques, or the promise of easy solutions. Instead, it is a space for truly individualized psychotherapy—relational work that respects the complexity of each person’s life, experience, history, relationships, and questions of meaning.

Much of the work I do involves thoughtful, reflective people who have found that other forms of counseling, therapy, or medication management alone have failed to meet them in the deeper places of their lives. Often they are navigating profound transitions and questions of identity, vocation, faith, purpose, relationship, or psychological formation.

In our time, many people feel pressured to become something other than who they sense themselves to truly be. Therapy, at its best, allows a person to become more fully themselves—creating space for what is already within them to emerge and become known.

Over the coming days I’ll be sharing more about the philosophy of this practice, the kind of work I do, and who it may be a good fit for.

For now, welcome to Depth KC.

—
Dr. Joshua R. Paszkiewicz, LCPC, RN