In coaching and therapy, intuition often whispers before it speaks. A sudden image, a phrase that lands just right, or a tingling awareness in the body—these subtle experiences are sometimes called the clair senses: clairvoyance, clairaudience, clairsentience, clairalience, clairgustance, and claircognizance. We’ll discuss reclaiming symbolic ways of knowing in coaching and therapy and look at the clair senses through a neo-Jungian lens.
Though these terms sound mystical, they describe something profoundly human: our innate ability to perceive meaning through symbolic, sensory, and imaginal channels.
The Neo-Jungian View of the Clair Senses
While Carl Jung never spoke directly of “the clairs,” he did speak about The Transcendent Function,* about how symbolic material arises from the unconscious through image, feeling, and sensation to create new meaning — a process strikingly similar to intuitive or “clair” awareness.
From a Neo-Jungian perspective, these clair faculties are not supernatural gifts but psychic functions—ways the unconscious communicates with consciousness. Jung taught that the psyche speaks in symbols and images, and Neo-Jungian thought expands that idea to include embodied and sensory knowing.
Each clair sense corresponds to one of our physical senses and represents a particular symbolic pathway for intuitive perception:
Clairvoyance (Clear Seeing)
The imaginal eye of the psyche. Inner vision that reveals metaphors, patterns, or imagery from the unconscious. A client might appear as “standing at a crossroads,” or you may see light or color around them. This is the visual imagination through which the Self shows us symbolic truth.
Clairaudience (Clear Hearing)
The inner ear of the soul. Words, tones, or music that arise internally can represent the voice of wisdom, an archetype, or the call of vocation. Jung might say this is how the transcendent function speaks—bridging conscious and unconscious dialogue.
Clairsentience (Clear Feeling)
The body as barometer of truth. This is the somatic imagination—the intuitive resonance that arrives as sensation: tension, warmth, chills, expansion, or contraction. These embodied messages mirror archetypal emotion and invite empathy, compassion, and energetic attunement.
Clairalience (Clear Smelling)
The olfactory imagination. A sudden aroma of rose, pine, or smoke might arise when the psyche connects present experience with memory or symbol. In Jungian terms, this is anamnesis—a sensory trigger that awakens unconscious material, similar to how scent evokes memory in dreams and active imagination.
Clairgustance (Clear Tasting)
The taste of memory or meaning. Sometimes a flavor comes to mind unbidden—sweet, bitter, metallic—each carrying metaphorical information. Within depth psychology, this can be seen as an embodied symbol, the psyche’s way of giving literal “taste” to an emotional truth.
Claircognizance (Clear Knowing)
The intuitive intellect. Knowledge that arrives whole, without logical steps—a sudden certainty. Rather than “psychic download,” this can be viewed as the unconscious offering insight from the field of potentiality, what Jung described as numinous intuition.
Clairepresence (Clear Presence)
The sense of being with or feeling the nearness of another presence—whether that presence is symbolic, ancestral, archetypal, or spiritual. In Jungian terms, this can be viewed as the psyche’s capacity to perceive the invisible field of relationship—that numinous sense that “something larger” is co-present. For some, this may manifest as channeling or communion with subtle energies, animal spirits, or angelic beings. From a Neo-Jungian perspective, clairepresence reflects the archetype of relatedness itself—the instinct to enter dialogue with the unseen dimensions of psyche and spirit.
Intuition as Bridge Between Ego and Self
In Neo-Jungian practice, intuition serves as the bridge between ego and Self—between what we consciously know and what the psyche longs for us to realize. The clair senses are simply the languages of that bridge.
As coaches and therapists, our role is to stay curious rather than declarative. When an image, word, or sensation arises, we don’t impose meaning—we invite reflection:
“What might that image or feeling be showing you?”
This inquiry keeps the process client-centered and symbolic, allowing new meaning to emerge through the coaching dialogue.
Integrating the Clair Senses into Coaching and Therapy
Developing intuitive literacy begins with reflective and embodied awareness:
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Notice your sensory impressions—inner images, words, feelings, scents, or tastes.
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Pause before interpreting. Stay open to metaphor.
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Invite the client’s meaning-making.
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Reflect afterward. Journal, dream, or bring the experience to supervision.
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Stay grounded. Intuition is most effective when anchored in presence and ethics.
When we understand the clair senses symbolically, we reclaim a birthright of embodied knowing—the subtle dialogue between soul and psyche that guides transformation.
Soul Note
When have you received inner guidance through a sensory impression—something seen, heard, felt, smelled, tasted, or known?
How might you cultivate these perceptions as part of your coaching presence?
Reference
*Jung, C. G., & Hull, R. F. C. (2023). The Transcendent Function 1. In Collected works of CG Jung (pp. v8_67-v8_91). Routledge.
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