Who We Are

Since 1973, the IRSJA has grown into the largest Jungian Training Institute in North America, consisting of over 200 member analysts and a large body of training candidates.

The Inter-Regional Society of Jungian Analysts (IRSJA) was created in 1973 by a group of Jungian analysts whose desire was to bring C.G. Jung and analytic training to areas of the United States outside existing training programs in large metropolitan areas. Now, more than fifty years later, their original vision has grown into the largest Jungian Training Institute in North America, meeting not only the need to train future Jungian analysts, but to also provide an active professional community for analysts and training candidates across the North America. The IRSJA is unique in its geographic accessibility and diversity. Our training programs are located in regions across the United States and include analysts and candidates from Canada and Mexico. One of our essential and enduring purposes is to generate intellectual excitement and cultivate professional community. This is enhanced by the fact that we now have over 200 member analysts and a large body of training candidates. Our semi-annual conferences are dynamic forums for fellowship and learning, and are held in cities across the United States and Canada. Continuing education credits that meet licensure requirements are available to both analysts and candidate trainees.

We welcome inquiries from mental health professionals from all training backgrounds who are interested in Jungian training. We also welcome applications for membership from graduates of other accredited Jungian training programs.

We invite you to take a closer look! If your interest is in training to become an analyst, please visit our Analytic Training Program page by clicking here or on the Become An Analyst tab at the top of this page. If you are currently a Diplomate Jungian Analyst and are interested in learning more about us or joining our Society, please visit Membership for Applying Analysts.

If you are new to Jung and Jungian analysis, we invite you to learn more by visiting the Jungian Analysis page.

Thank you for your interest, and please let us know if you have any questions. Respective e-mail addresses and phone numbers for persons to contact are included in the Analytic Training Program and Membership for Applying Analysts pages of our site.

About C.G. Jung

Jung was the first to understand the importance of psychological development in adults and worked face-to-face with his patients in a process of mutual discovery.

Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961), Swiss psychiatrist and founder of Analytical Psychology, was one of the great explorers of the inner world we call the psyche. Many of Dr. Jung’s ideas have entered mainstream thought and influence how we think about ourselves today.

Jung began his professional life treating patients and conducting research at the Burgholzi Clinic in Zurich, then the most famous psychiatric hospital in Europe. He was already prominent in his field when he read Freud’s Interpretation of Dreams, after which he wrote to Freud. Jung felt his research could provide scientific corroboration of Freud’s theories of the unconscious. The two men then met in 1906 and began an intense collaboration to map unconscious realms.

Their relationship ended in 1913 as Jung developed psychological theories that differed from Freud’s. Freud’s theories were rooted in sexuality, and he thought the unconscious was mainly a repository for repressed experience. Jung, however, realized that because universal mythological themes arise in dreams and fantasies, the unconscious was also the wellspring of creativity and growth. Jung later understood these themes as archetypes – the inner themes that provide the bases for how we live, think and feel.

The break with Freud precipitated a six-year period of personal crisis that Jung came to call his “confrontation with the unconscious”. He chronicled this period in the Red Book, a large, richly illustrated volume that was published in 2009. His experience became the foundation for a lifetime’s work that embraced wide-ranging studies, writing, travel and teaching. Jung’s theory and method, Analytical Psychology, mapped human dynamics in their complexity and depth.

Jung was the first to understand the importance of psychological development in adults and worked face-to-face with his patients in a process of mutual discovery. He felt people were motivated most significantly by an innate desire to realize their potential, which he called individuation, the goal of Jung’s psychoanalytic method.

Jung also developed the concept of typology, which introduced introversion and extraversion and identified major functions of consciousness. (The widely used Myers-Briggs Type Indicator [MBTI] is based on Jung’s theory.) Jung also gave us the theory of synchronicity, a concept of meaningful “coincidental” connections. He was one of the few theorists to pursue human development across one’s entire lifespan, whereas most other psychoanalysts posited development was a childhood phenomenon only. He focuses as much on a person’s future as much as her past. His extensive theoretical works constitute a comprehensive understanding of conscious and unconscious processes.