“The unconscious corresponds to the mythic land of the dead, the land of the ancestors” (C.G. Jung, MDR, p.216)

Why can Jungian psychology with all its various concepts be considered to be the closest one to African psychology? This lecture deals with the primordial indigenous roots of C.G. Jung’s Analytical Psychology, in particular their African ones. The affinities between Jungian psychology and African Traditional Healing seem to prove the fact that Jung’s concepts are not artificially or purely intellectually conceived constructions, but correspond to ways how humans,unconsciously or consciously, are and were experiencing their psychic life in our as well as in other cultures since immemorial times.

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Peter Ammann is a founding member of ISAP ZURICH, where he is a lecturer,training analyst and supervisor. After training as a cellist, he was encouraged by Jung himself and by his analysts, Jolande Jacobi and Marie-Louise von Franz, to follow Jungian studies. He graduated from the C. G. Jung Institute Zurich in 1965. His 1984 encounter with Laurens van der Post inspired his interests in Africa, the Bush people, their rock paintings, and in African Traditional Healing. He made several documentary films and DVDs related to Southern Africa and the Encounter and ongoing Dialogue between Jungian Analysts and African Traditional Healers.

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Jung, C.G., Memories, Dreams Reflections,Fontana Paperbacks (1983)

Stevens A., The Two Million-Year-Old Self, TexasA&M University Press, College Station (1993)

Van der Post, L., Jung and the Story of our Time, Penguin Books (1978)

Bührmann,V., Living in two Worlds – Communication between a white healer and her black counterparts, Human & Rousseau, Cape Town and Pretoria (1984)

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