Dr. Plunket is a New York State licensed clinical psychologist. She received her Ph.D. from The New School for Social Research in 1989. For more than thirty years, Susan Plunket has been in private practice working with individuals, couples, and families. Her clinical training was at Bellevue Hospital, New York Hospital, and The Postgraduate Center for Mental Health.
From 2006 to 2009 she served as a member of the Board of Trustees of the Jung Foundation. Currently, she is on the Advisory Board of Quadrant, the Journal of the C.G. Jung Foundation for Analytical Psychology. Her office is in Greenwich Village.
Susan Plunket
“Accept your neurosis as your truest and most precious possession. Find out what it means, what it has to teach, what its function is.... we do not cure it - it cures us.” — C.G. Jung
Calling a therapist is an act of personal courage and self care
It means you are able to set your ego aside and be willing to ask for help. I will meet you more than half way in this process. Listening and helping you make sense of your pain is my primary job.
If you're suffering from PTSD or anxiety or depression or struggling with parenting or heartbreak or relationship or job stress - I can help you. I love my work of accompanying people on their journey from suffering to freedom.
The Therapeutic Process
Therapy is conversation with a purpose, the purpose of introducing us to ourselves in a new way. What starts as a conversation can become a journey to a deeper freer life. Early in the journey we meet our shadow, those parts of ourselves we’d rather keep hidden. It’s valuable to acquaint ourselves with our shadow because if we don’t, it will control us. It’s the things we don’t see about ourselves which generally run the show. But our shadow isn’t only things we find disagreeable. There’s also gold in our shadow which is transformative when we discover it.
Another part of the journey is observing our persona, the mask we wear for society. The task is to unwrap the constraints of our persona to allow space for our greater Self to breathe through it so we can be more authentic in all our encounters.
As we move deeper into the therapeutic process, we continue to explore the unconscious so it can feed and enrich our life much like an inner spring. Dreams, creative work and active imagination facilitate this part of the journey as they introduce us to the archetypes and complexes which possess us causing conflict and pain. We examine the unconscious forces affecting us, so we can harness these energies, fantasies and intuitions, making use of them but not allowing them to swamp us so that we’re useless in the outer world.
Among the deepest work we can do according to Jung is integrating our inner contra-sexual self, our inner opposite. Jung postulated that each woman has within her an inner man, her animus, and each man has within him an inner woman, his anima. Meeting these inner beings and integrating them is challenging because they are unconscious, we meet them mostly as projections.
Once we meet and integrate our shadow, our persona, our anima or animus, our unconscious desires and fears, we’re already living a life freer of conflict, self-doubt and pain. This integration of the opposites within us is what allows us to be whole and to feel at home in our own skin no matter what situation we find ourselves in. We know where we stand. We know who we are.
“The privilege of a lifetime is to become who you are.” C.G. Jung
Couple Therapy
pre-marital counseling
marriage counseling
infidelity
trust issues
ADHD issues in couples
Adoption
self-worth
identity
self-love
abandonment
reunion
Specialization
Anxiety
panic attacks
agoraphobia
performance anxiety
social anxiety
Dream Work
"Dreams give information about the secrets of the inner life and reveal to the dreamer hidden factors of his personality. As long as these are undiscovered, they disturb his waking life and betray themselves only in the form of symptoms."
— Carl Jung
Depression
grief
loss
mood swings
sleep disorders
ADHD in Adults
Holistic Therapies
meditation
reiki