Sally McLaren Jungian Analyst and Psychoanalytic Psychotherapist
Horsham, West Sussex

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My Approach

I see therapy as a process in which together we seek to create a relationship in which all manner of troubling questions about the mind, body and soul can be explored in a spirit of curiosity, openness and honesty.

I recognise that the difficulties which bring people into therapy are often the tip of the iceberg with deeper underlying causes requiring exploration and understanding in the context of a secure and confidential therapeutic relationship.



My formal training and my independent study over the last twenty years have contributed to my familiarity with the main ideas of theorists such as Freud, Jung, Klein, Winnicott, Bion and contemporary critiques as well as recent research in the fields of attachment theory and trauma. This provides a rich resource to draw upon in my work.

However I have a particular and longstanding interest in the work and ideas of Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist Carl Gustav Jung. It is his ideas which resonate most with my own experience and which have been the most influential on my thinking. Jung’s unique contribution and way of working could perhaps be summed up by saying that he had a profound respect for the individual and the wisdom buried in the individual’s own psyche. He saw it as the therapist’s role to help the person towards deeper self awareness and living a more authentic life. He thought that the difficulties which bring people into therapy were often due to conflicts between different parts of the individual’s personality and that whilst these difficulties could be extremely painful and challenging, they could also be creative and lead to personal growth, development and, indeed, transformation.

The following quote from Jungian analyst August Cwik summarises my beliefs about how analytic therapy works.....

‘Listening analytically is not listening just to what is said but listening to what is just below the surface waiting to be said – or, as the alchemists so aptly phrased it, ‘the search for what not yet is’ (Petrus Bonus 1330). The royal road to apprehending this mercurial element is through the use of the imagination to inform one about the nature of the ‘third thing’ that is being co-created in the analytic situation.’ (Cwik, (2017)



Cwik, A. J. (2017). Journal of Analytical Psychology 62, 1, 107-129.



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