What is Jungian Analysis? — Depth Psychotherapy in London
It is one of the most demanding forms of psychotherapeutic training in existence. Full Jungian analyst training typically takes five to seven years, involves the analyst being analysed themselves over many years by a senior practitioner, and requires extensive supervised clinical work. Dr Philippe Jacquet trained with the Association of Jungian Analysts and practises Jungian analysis in London at Harley Street W1 and Central London.
Jungian analysis is a form of depth psychotherapy developed from the work of Carl Gustav Jung. Unlike approaches focused primarily on the past — or on symptom reduction in the present — Jungian analysis has a prospective orientation: it asks not just where you have been, but where the psyche is trying to go next.
It is one of the most demanding forms of psychotherapeutic training in existence. Full Jungian analyst training typically takes five to seven years, involves the analyst being analysed themselves over many years by a senior practitioner, and requires extensive supervised clinical work. Dr Philippe Jacquet trained with the Association of Jungian Analysts and practises Jungian analysis in London at Harley Street W1 and Central London.
A different question
Most therapeutic approaches begin with the presenting problem and work backwards — understanding where difficulties came from and how they were formed. Jungian analysis does this too, but it holds another question alongside it: what is the psyche trying to become?
Jung understood symptoms, repeated patterns, and disturbing dreams not simply as evidence of what went wrong, but as signals — often disguised, often uncomfortable — of something the psyche is trying to move toward. The analysis creates a space in which those signals can be heard and understood.
“I am not only looking at the past. I am really looking at where the psyche wants to go next. This is something very important in Jungian analysis.” — Dr Philippe Jacquet
Conscious and unconscious
Modern life exerts a continuous pressure toward consciousness — toward rationality, efficiency, and the managed self. Over time this creates an imbalance. The unconscious — with its imagery, instinct, symbolic life, and creative energy — becomes increasingly remote.
The consequence is often not dramatic. It is a progressive flattening: a loss of meaning, a sense of going through the motions, a feeling that something essential is missing without being able to name what. Jungian analysis works to restore the conversation between conscious and unconscious life.
“Jungian analysis helps by bringing unconscious material into the conscious soup — changing the soup, changing the taste of life. Finding meaning is very important.” — Dr Philippe Jacquet
Key concepts in Jungian analysis
The unconscious. For Jung, the unconscious is not simply the repository of repressed experience. It is an autonomous system with its own logic, its own imagery, and its own direction. Dreams are among its primary languages.
The shadow. The parts of the self that have been pushed outside conscious awareness — not only the qualities we would rather not acknowledge, but also unlived potential, unexpressed capacities, the life not yet lived. Shadow work is central to Jungian analysis.
The persona. The face we present to the world — necessary and functional, but dangerous when identified with too completely. Analysis helps distinguish between who we are performing and who we actually are.
Individuation. Jung’s term for the lifelong process of becoming more fully oneself — not the self society or family required, but the self that belongs to one’s own particular nature. This is the direction in which Jungian analysis moves.
Dreams. Treated in Jungian analysis as genuine communications from the unconscious, not wish fulfilments or random noise. Working with dreams — tracking their imagery, feeling-tone, and symbolic content — is a central part of the work.
What Jungian analysis addresses
Jungian analysis is particularly suited to certain kinds of difficulty — not because other presentations do not respond, but because some things bring people specifically to depth work:
- A persistent sense that something essential is missing, despite external success
- Repeated patterns in relationships or work that do not change despite understanding
- A life transition — midlife, post-achievement, bereavement, retirement — that has unsettled a previously stable sense of identity
- Anxiety or depression that has not responded adequately to other approaches
- Dreams, images, or experiences that feel significant but remain unintegrated
- The desire to understand one’s own psychological structure more deeply — not just to function better, but to live more fully
What Jungian analysis looks like in practice
Sessions are open-ended conversations. There is no fixed structure, no workbook, no homework in the behavioural sense. What is brought to each session — dreams, events, images, thoughts that recur — becomes the material of the work. The analyst listens not only to what is said but to what the psyche is doing with what is said.
The pace is the psyche’s pace, not a schedule imposed from outside.
“You will not suffer less. You will suffer better.” — Dr Philippe Jacquet
Change in Jungian analysis is not primarily behavioural. It is a change in the quality of one’s relationship to one’s own experience — a deepening, a widening, a greater capacity to live with what is true rather than what is comfortable.
Jungian analysis in London — Dr Philippe Jacquet
Dr Philippe Jacquet is a Jungian analyst and integrative psychotherapist practising at Harley Street W1 and Central London. He trained with the Association of Jungian Analysts and has over 25 years of clinical practice. Sessions are available in person and online in English and French.
An initial consultation is the appropriate first step — a private conversation in which you can speak about what has brought you here, with no obligation to continue.