Student Semester Program
Spring 2026

Cancel culture has become a highly contentious social issue that sharply polarises opinion: its defenders regard it as a strategy to highlight and combat social injustice, while its critics raise concerns about freedom of expression and the creation of a climate of intolerance. This interactive seminar explores aspects of the phenomenon from a Jungian perspective – including archetypal patterns of shaming, ostracism, and punishment, cultural complexes, confrontation with the collective shadow and collective intergenerational trauma.

ISAP Students (MA, TC, DC)

Focusing on the more practical aspects of Jungian dreamwork, we will be using the sessions to work on actual dreams and combining our sessions to discuss all aspects of Jungian dream theory.

15 ISAP Students (MA, TC, DC)

This course requires extra work between sessions.

In this seminar we will work together on Grimms’ fairy tale “The Blue Light.” By following its path, uncovering the images along its way, and deciphering its symbols, we will try to fathom its deeper meaning.

20 ISAP Students (MA, TC, DC)

This course requires extra work between sessions.

This module will analyse the representations of archetypal figures in the music dramas of Richard Wagner—including those of the father, the hero/heroine, the shadow, and the anima and animus. It will explore Wagner’s portrayals of these archetypes in the context of the individuation process, and the ways in which the sung text and music evoke the encounter with them. Parallels with be drawn with phenomena encountered in clinical practice.

ISAP Students (MA, TC, DC)

This two-part seminar follows an analytical case alongside “The Princess Who Was Transformed into a Worm,” tracing the symbolic stages of descent, confrontation with the repressed Feminine, devoted inner work, sacrifice of the old attitude, and psychic renewal. We are not seeking parallels to personal biography, but the archetypal patterns that emerge when a man begins to awaken from unconscious containment. Through dreams and fairytales, we explore how the unconscious Feminine draws the ego into transformative relationships – often through suffering, conflict, and sustained inner effort.

ISAP Students (MA, TC, DC)

Starting with wide movements of the brush, we try to let the picture guide us. We allow unconscious elements to unravel and express themselves while also dealing with the interference of our ego-consciousness. The course is an introduction to art work in psychotherapy. If possible, please bring your own brushes and paints (gouache only!)
Location: Atelier Ruth Bourgogne, Badenerstrasse 173, 8003 Zurich
Fee for room rental: CHF 48 (total)

8 ISAP Students (MA, TC, DC)

This guided walking tour visits places in and around Basel where Jung lived and went to school from ages 4 to 25 and makes connections to visions, dreams and paintings. We visit the parsonage where Carl Jung lived and the church in Kleinhüningen. The tour continues to the center of Basel where we visit sites such as the Basel Cathedral and Jung’s high school and university. Following the tour, we have the opportunity to visit an alchemical laboratory. Participants are responsible for purchasing a City Ticket (train from Zurich to Basel with tram ticket; cost approx. 72CHF).
Further information will be provided upon registration. If you have questions contact: [email protected]

15 ISAP Students (MA, TC, DC)

In this seminar we will look at racism from many cultural perspectives through a depth psychological lens of shadow and development.

20 ISAP Students (MA, TC, DC)

This course requires extra work between sessions.

After a very short introduction on the cultural unconscious, you will break into small groups based on your home culture. You will be given three or four major archetypal figures and asked to identify their typical image in your home culture. This will be followed by a discussion of the similarities and differences each group has identified.

ISAP Students (MA, TC, DC)

In the introductory seminar on the Word Association Experiment, we will present the history, theory, and some practice of the WAE in preparation for your work with clients. This seminar is open to all students, but it is required for candidates in the diploma program, and it is the prerequisite for attendance of the also required, later WAE Presentation Seminar.

ISAP Students (MA, TC, DC)

This course requires extra work between sessions.

This seminar, which follows the lecture on the Attachment Complex, deepens the link between theory and practice. Using selected clinical vignettes, participants will examine how early trauma, relational ruptures, and attachment-related complexes shape adult relationships. The focus is on integrating Jungian and attachment theory perspectives. We will be highlighting the psyche’s teleological drive toward healing and try to better understand consuming love, defensive structures, and the search for wholeness.

20 ISAP Students (MA, TC, DC)

It is said that ‘play is the cradle of humanity.’ To better understand the deep psychological starting points for play therapy and play-based diagnosis, we will examine the anthropological dimension of play and the psychological insights into playing. The role of parents and caretakers in the development of early childhood play behavior will also be highlighted. Some important literature will be introduced with brief presentations. The seminar is meant to give space for the discussion of selected articles or chapters in relation to Jungian work and understanding.

12 ISAP Students (MA, TC, DC)

This course requires extra work between sessions.

Meeting traumatized children at the Children’s House in the Bergen Police District has given me unique insight into the horrors of trauma and dissociation in these children. I will share a clinically rich and comprehensive overview of the trauma treatment and crisis intervention given. I will also bring in the deep experience of love, healing and playful approaches to serious problems in therapy, such as dreamwork, psychodrama, active encounter with inner figures, drawings and sand play.

ISAP Students (MA, TC, DC)

We will look at some case vignettes from the point of view of various schools of depth psychology. We will compare their concepts of the unconscious and their approaches to its manifestations in dreams and symptoms. NOTE: This is basically the same course as in spring 2025.

14 ISAP Students (MA, TC, DC)

We will be investigating the history, symptoms and resulting cascade of physical effects set in motion by sustained deep suffering and resulting archaic defenses. This lecture is the prerequisite for the trauma seminar “Trauma Therapy” (offered in a future semester). J. L. Herman: Trauma and Recovery, 2015 / B. van der Kolk: The Body Keeps the Score

20 ISAP Students (MA, TC, DC)

In this course we will look at personality disorders in order to understand what the medical diagnosis means and consider what depth psychology has to offer as treatment.

20 ISAP Students (MA, TC, DC)

This seminar will begin a new cycle of the PDM2 classes. It will focus on readings, lectures and discussion from the PDM2, the Symptom Axis. The goal of this seminar is to sharpen thinking about assessment and diagnostic formulations. It is especially helpful to those who do not have a clinical therapy background. The readings will be provided by the instructor.

16 ISAP Students (MA, TC, DC)

Many artworks explore aspects of human experience that are similar to those dealt with in clinical practice, when individuals are attempting to get to grips with challenging circumstances and/or difficulties originating in earlier periods of their lives. This seminar examines how works of art can offer insights into key aspects of the individuation process – including the containment of intrapsychic conflict, efforts at working through, integration of past experience and the shadow, as well as the experience of closure, transcendence, and new growth (or the failure to achieve these).

ISAP Students (MA, TC, DC)