Life in Conversation with Images

  • Winter 2024
 

Welcome. For more than fifty years, my life and work have been shaped by an ongoing conversation with the images that arise through dreams, fairy tales, art, writing, psychotherapy, and the unexpected moments when psyche asks us to pay attention.

The Practice

I began The Eagle’s Nest Holistic Mental Health in 1986, and throughout the years since, I have had the privilege of accompanying individuals as they have sought to understand not only the difficulties and transitions of their lives, but also the deeper questions that so often emerge through them. My work as a depth psychotherapist and psychiatric nurse practitioner has taught me that symptoms matter, but they are not always the whole story. Sometimes what first appears as anxiety, depression, loneliness, loss, or a troubling dream may also become an invitation to listen more closely to what is seeking to be known.

Beyond the Consulting Room

Over time, this same way of listening has carried me beyond the consulting room and more deeply into writing and teaching. Dreams, fairy tales, symbolic images, and the creative unconscious have become enduring companions in my work, each offering its own way of understanding the movement of psyche and the unfolding of the soul’s journey.

Published Work

The Alchemy of Fairy Tales

A three-volume study of Grimm’s fairy tales read through depth psychology and alchemical symbolism.

Cover of The Alchemy of Fairy Tales, Volume I by Lois E. Wilkins

Volume I

Four Grimm tales read in full through alchemical analysis.

Order on Amazon

Cover of The Alchemy of Fairy Tales, Volume II by Lois E. Wilkins

Volume II

The method deepens — from pathologizing a symptom to psychologizing it.

Available in print

Cover of The Alchemy of Fairy Tales, Volume III by Lois E. Wilkins

Volume III New

Alchemy as a living process, not a historical curiosity.

Order on Amazon

All three volumes →

Clinical Practice

My clinical practice remains an important part of this work. As a depth psychotherapist and psychiatric nurse practitioner, I continue to work with individuals seeking psychotherapy, consultation, and psychiatric care. Yet after many years of private practice, I find myself increasingly called to extend the conversation beyond the consulting room through writing, teaching, and the shared exploration of the imaginal life.

Perhaps that is the deeper invitation of this website: to create a place where we might remain curious about the images that find us, the stories that accompany us, and the questions that ask to be lived rather than too quickly answered.

Beginning August 2026 · Monthly Gathering

Living the Symbolic Life

A Monthly Gathering for Those Who Wish to Live More Deeply

“The symbolic life is not mastered. It is practiced.”

This is not an academic course, nor is it a certification program. It is a monthly gathering of people who share a common desire: to cultivate what C. G. Jung called the symbolic attitude. Together we explore those images that have accompanied humanity across centuries — not to master them, but to allow them to become companions in the continuing formation of our own consciousness.

Each month we gather around a single theme that invites conversation among dreams, fairy tales, mythology, poetry, psychology, philosophy, and the ordinary experiences of daily life. Rather than moving quickly toward conclusions, we slow down. We remain with an image a little longer than is comfortable. We listen before we explain.

This Year Following the Image — twelve gatherings exploring a single question: what happens when we trust an image long enough for it to become a companion rather than an object of interpretation?

Begins Sunday, August 23, 2026Meets Fourth Sunday monthly, 4:00 p.m.Tuition $40 per gatheringFormat In person or Zoom

Places are limited so that conversation remains possible. A call or a note is all it takes — there is no application, and no year-long commitment.