An Analyst’s Training

An Analyst’s Training

There are only about 2,500 practicing Jungian Analysts worldwide. Only someone who has undergone the extensive training program in Jungian analysis and holds a Diploma in Analytical Psychology from a recognized Jungian Institute is a Jungian Analyst.

These training institutes are accredited by the International Association for Analytical Psychology and the diploma is equivalent to a PhD in the philosophy of psychology. Candidates must hold at least a master’s degree before applying for training; this is generally considered to be the foundation for the further training of becoming a Jungian analyst. Analytic training requires a minimum of four additional years, depending on the individual and the training institute.

Some unique characteristics of Jungian training are:

Training to become a Jungian analyst encompasses not only the principles of depth psychology, but also the integration of creative expressions of the unconscious such as dreamwork, art and picture interpretation, mythology and fairy tales as well as many related disciplines such as comparative religions and ethnology. In addition, there are four or more years of lectures, seminars, an extensive psychiatric internship, two years of supervised clinical analytical work, successful completion of two sets of comprehensive oral examinations, and a thesis.

Training to become a Jungian analyst also includes extensive personal analysis (a minimum of 300 hours). Jung insisted on this, “We have learned to place in the foreground the personality of the doctor himself as a curative or harmful factor; . . . what is now demanded is his own transformation-the self-education of the educator. . . . The doctor can no longer evade his own difficulty by treating the difficulties of others: the man who suffers from a running abscess is not fit to perform a surgical operation.” [“Problems of Modern Psychotherapy,” par. 172]