“all human beings are pathfinders, hewing their way through a dense forest”
(The Gnostic Jung and Seven Sermons to the Dead, Hoeller, 1982)
Anne Donald – Jungian Analyst – Oxford
Why might you want to come into Jungian analysis?
Perhaps you have come to a transition point in your life: whether to begin or end a relationship or job? Or maybe you feel you have taken a wrong turning? Something has not worked out as it should or there are complications. Maybe you feel you haven’t fulfilled your potential or that you are stuck in a holding pattern where the same issues keep cropping up despite your best attempts?
As many reasons as there are individuals can bring us into analysis. For any of these reasons, taking a look in depth is always worthwhile. How else can we gain new insight, free ourselves from past constraints and live into more freedom and choice. Jung talks of “the bridge between the lost and abandoned world of the past and the still largely inconceivable world of the future. How should we lay hold of the future, how should we assimilate it, unless we are in possession of the human experience which the past has bequeathed to us?”
What is Analytical psychology?
Analytical psychology is psychology in depth, and is based on the work of Carl Jung, a Swiss psychiatrist. He saw our issues and symptoms as an attempt at a cure. When we drop down to questions of meaning and purpose, not as general questions but as personal ones – what is the meaning and purpose of MY life? – then we are engaging at depth. Our dreams give pointers to our bigger self, identifying the questions we need to address and live into. This is a path to a more expansive view of life and a bigger personality.
“..there is in the unconscious something of great value – a kernel of gold an equivalent of the celestial sun in pure gold.”
(The Gnostic Jung and Seven Sermons to the Dead, Hoeller, 1982)
Anne Donald, Jungian Analyst
Whatever questions or problems we might hold in our outer life, no matter how intractable, much of the answer is to be found in our inner depths. Our inner world is vast, and we make so little of it conscious, yet all our potential is there - in the dark as it were. What is already achieved is no longer potential, it’s already realised. When we explore the cultural, spiritual and psychological aspects of our being, some of which show up in our dreams, new possibilities can emerge that are life enhancing. Gaining more awareness of our inner dynamics, eg our values and beliefs, or how we have been shaped by our history, can liberate us from unnecessary constraints and enable us to live with greater energy and freedom.
Anne is a qualified analytical psychologist with a practice in Oxford. She works in person and online.
Previously she worked in facilitating individual and team change in the corporate world, working in the UK and internationally.
