ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the integrative approach to counseling and discusses the concept of semiotic therapy as learning with the unconscious. Tapping into the unconscious is made possible by means of imaginative projection. According to the projective hypothesis, the most important feature of people is what they cannot or will not say. While the conscious mind speaks in words, the unconscious expresses itself through different, non-verbal regimes of signs such as images. The chapter describes in detail a documented case study that demonstrates the progressive integration of the unconscious by means of interpreting its elusive signs. A counseling session becomes a mode of ethical holistic pedagogy as it contributes to self-knowledge and the construction of the relational self as a person’s semiotic subjectivity. The chapter also briefly discusses the role of dialogue and the relation between semiotics and cognitive science.
