Jungian Analysis

Jungian analysis in London

Jungian analysis is depth psychotherapy, slow, thorough, and oriented towards meaning rather than symptom. It is not the right approach for everyone. It is the right approach for the person who has managed their life effectively and finds, at some point, that management is no longer enough.

Who Jungian analysis is for

• People in midlife questioning the life they have built
• People who keep repeating the same relational pattern
• People who have worked in shorter-term therapy and found something remains untouched
• People experiencing a crisis of meaning, professional, personal, existential
• People interested in understanding themselves at depth, not just managing symptoms
• People in creative or intellectual professions seeking to work on the interior life

The Jungian approach

Jungian analysis works with the unconscious, not as a repository of repressed trauma to be excavated, but as a living dimension of the psyche that continues to shape experience, relationship, and behaviour in the present. Dreams, imagination, myth, and symbol are all part of the clinical material.

The concepts that anchor the work (the Shadow, the Persona, the Anima and Animus, the Self, individuation) are not abstractions. They are observable phenomena that appear in the clinical material of every person who enters depth therapy. Naming them gives the work traction.

Transference (the way a person’s entire relational history arrives in the room with the therapist) is central to the work. It is not something to be managed away. It is the clinical material itself. Working with transference in the present tense is where the most significant change happens.

Depth and frequency

Jungian analysis typically involves sessions more than once a week. This is not a commercial decision. It is a clinical one. Depth work requires continuity. Insights need time to integrate. The relationship between analyst and analysand needs to develop to a point where the unconscious material can move.

Once a week is the minimum for this kind of work to proceed. Twice or three times a week is where the most significant movement happens. The right frequency is discussed in the initial consultation.

What is Jungian therapy, and is it the same as analysis?

The two terms are used loosely, so it is worth separating them.

Jungian therapy describes psychotherapy informed by Jung: symptoms are treated as meaningful rather than simply faulty, and dreams, images and recurring patterns are part of the material alongside the presenting problem. It can be weekly, and it can be time-limited.

Jungian analysis is the more intensive form. Higher frequency, open-ended, and conducted by someone who has completed analytic training. It goes further because it can afford to.

Most people begin with the first and some move to the second. The decision is made in the work rather than in advance.

What a Jungian analyst actually is

This matters more than it sounds, because one of these titles is protected and the other is not.

Anyone may describe themselves as a Jungian therapist. Jungian analyst requires several years of post-qualification training at an institute accredited by the International Association for Analytical Psychology, personal analysis at high frequency running throughout that training, and supervised clinical practice before qualification.

Dr Jacquet trained with the Association of Jungian Analysts and is listed on its public register as analyst, supervising analyst and training analyst.

Those last two are the senior grades. A training analyst is approved to conduct the personal analysis of candidates training to become analysts. A supervising analyst is approved to supervise their clinical work. Of the forty-seven analysts on the AJA register, twelve hold all three.

It is a recognition granted by the professional body rather than a claim made on a website, which is the point: you can check it in about thirty seconds.

Practicalities

Sessions are fifty minutes, at Harley Street W1, in Central London, or online anywhere in the world. In English or French.

Frequency is discussed at the first consultation rather than assumed. Once weekly is the minimum for analytic work to proceed; twice weekly is where most of the movement happens.

Analysis is not the right answer for everyone, and where something else would serve you better you will be told so at the assessment.

Dr Philippe Jacquet is a UKCP registered psychotherapist, a Jungian analyst and an HCPC registered art psychotherapist, with twenty-five years of clinical practice. His Doctorate of Professional Practice at the University of Essex examined male eating disorders from the perspective of analytical psychology. Registration can be checked on either public register.

“The person who arrives asking what is wrong with them often discovers, in analysis, that there is nothing wrong. There is something unlived. That is different.”

Dr Philippe Jacquet

See also: the clinical concepts behind Jungian analysis.

The passage that brings most people to analysis in the second half of life: the midlife crisis.

How the work is delivered from here

All international sessions are by secure video, in English or French. Online therapy is not a reduced version of consulting room work: it is the format that lets weekly work survive living abroad, travelling, or relocating. Sessions run in United Kingdom hours, which suits most regions, and if your time zone makes none of it workable, say so when you enquire rather than assuming it rules you out.

For clinicians and treatment services

Dr Jacquet supervises clinical teams in private residential addiction treatment and in a private psychiatric hospital. For treatment centres, psychiatric units and group practices looking for external clinical supervision, including in places where no supervisor of this seniority is available locally, team supervision is also delivered by video. For individual practitioners, see clinical supervision.

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