Jungian Analysis: Entering the Labyrinthian Work of the Soul

...and how it differs from other types of psychotherapy

Jungian analysis is like stepping into the labyrinth of your own psyche. Once the journey begins, we can’t know what will be found along the way. At its centre is your soul, or Self, and also the transpersonal Self, the divine, waiting to be met.

Some work heals the mind so life can resume as before. Jungian analysis listens for the voice of the Self and follows it into the places where life has not yet begun.

People sometimes arrive in my inbox asking to “work through a dream” or “resolve a current life crisis.” They’re often surprised when I try to explain that the work we might do together isn’t measured in weeks or even months, but often in years.

I understand the confusion. The language of “mental health” in our culture is dominated by a mainstream psychotherapy model, a focus on goals, problems to be solved, and symptoms to be managed. These are vital and life-giving aims. Psychotherapy can help us find relief, rebuild functioning, and navigate the immediate storms of life. But analysis isn’t the same work, and it doesn’t share the same map.

What analysis is and what it isn’t

Jungian analysis is most often not comparable to other psychotherapeutic approaches. It’s a sustained and in-depth relationship devoted to exploring the dialogue between consciousness and the unconscious. Jung wrote that the cure lies in relationship with the numinous, the felt encounter with something greater than ourselves. He also believed that the restoration of the religious function of the psyche, the instinct to relate to something beyond the ego, is the ultimate component of coming into greater psychic wholeness.

Soul doesn’t speak in plain words but in symbol, image, rhythm, gesture. This is the language of the right brain hemisphere, the part of us that perceives the whole, that lives in metaphor and music, that can hold what cannot yet be named. In analysis, we restore the capacity for this symbolic life.

My own work, Jungian Somatics™, engages the wisdom and complexity of the soma as a portal to the unconscious, an essential part of the analytic process. Through spontaneous movement, spontaneous drawing, and embodied active imagination, we allow the unconscious to speak in its own tongue. This isn’t how all analysts work but it’s the way I’ve integrated my analytic training with a somatic orientation that listens through the body as well as through words. My listening includes hearing through words into the psychoid realm, where psyche and matter touch.

This work asks us to confront not only the wounds of our personal history but also shadow aspects of ourselves that may have nothing to do with trauma. We explore how forces in the collective unconscious, including archetypal patterns, myths and images, can shape our fate outside of our awareness. Analysts are trained to see in the dark, to recognize the shapes of what has not yet come into the light and to sit with them until they can speak for themselves.

Jungian analysis differs from psychotherapy not only in its aim but in the preparation of the analyst. Analysts are trained over many years within internationally recognized analytic institutes. This training includes an intensive, personal analytic process that spans many years and is rigorous, requiring the analyst to work deeply with their own unconscious material before ever sitting with an analysand. The analyst is also immersed in the study of archetypal psychology, symbolic amplification, dream work, and the dynamics of the collective unconscious. This depth of training shapes the work, allowing the analyst to hold the complexity, mystery and transformative potential of the analytic process.

Analysis is often long-term and challenging, requiring us to stay with paradox, uncertainty and the unknown. It is not about returning to who we were before a crisis but entering a deeper and more authentic life, one that is shaped by an ongoing dialogue with both the personal and collective dimensions of the psyche.

Psychotherapy and Jungian analysis at a glance

Psychotherapy can sometimes be shorter-term, though not always, and often focuses on resolving specific issues or reducing symptoms. It primarily works with conscious thoughts, feelings, and behaviours, sometimes exploring early life experiences. Training for psychotherapists can vary widely in length and depth, and the work often aims to help people return to a pre-crisis state or improve daily functioning. Tools like insight and coping strategies are central.

Jungian analysis is typically long-term, often spanning years, and focuses on transformation of the whole personality. It works with both the personal and collective unconscious, engaging dreams, symbols, archetypal patterns, and moments of encounter with the numinous. Analysts undergo rigorous international training over many years, including their own extended personal analysis and intensive supervision. Crises are seen not as disruptions to overcome, but as possible openings into individuation and a more authentic life. Change happens through the analytic relationship, symbolic amplification, and the psyche’s own unfolding.

For therapists who become clients

In my current practice, most of my clients are therapists, practitioners or healers. For therapists who enter analysis as clients, the shift can be disorienting at first. In psychotherapy, you might be accustomed to a more consciously directed process, clear goals, measurable progress, tools to take home and ‘homework’ aimed at pushing the process forward versus surrendering to the self regulating function of psyche or soul. In analysis, the centre of gravity shifts. The work is no longer driven by a conscious agenda but by what emerges from the unconscious, which can be unpredictable, uncomfortable, and not immediately “resolvable.”

It can be confronting to let go of the familiar role of “knowing” and to meet aspects of the psyche that refuse quick understanding. The relationship with the analyst is different too. It isn’t about advice or strategies but about a shared attention to what is unfolding between you, within you, and in the symbolic life of your dreams and body. Over time, this shift can be profoundly liberating, but it often requires a period of letting the old maps fall away.

Jungian analysis is not a quicker or easier way to heal. It is a deeper and more demanding way to live into wholeness. It asks for patience, courage, and a willingness to be changed by what we cannot control or fully understand.

It’s an invitation to restore the language of symbol in our lives, to return the religious function of the psyche to its rightful place, and to enter a longer and sometimes more painfully honest conversation with the soul.