Into the Depths: A Psychoanalytic and Jungian Introduction to the Mind

Discover how the unconscious shapes your life and relationships

How do early relationships, dreams, desire and loss shape who we become?

This free six-week course introduces psychoanalytic and Jungian ideas about the mind, through video interviews with seven practising psychoanalytic and Jungian therapists, readings and reflective activities. No prior knowledge is needed, and you can work at your own pace.

Make sense of the unconscious

You’ll begin with core concepts such as the unconscious, the id, ego and super-ego, the shadow and individuation, and hear how therapy works in practice.

Explore family, dreams, and desire

Then you’ll look at how early family relationships form the psyche, how Freud and Jung read dreams, and how unconscious wishes, projection and repeating patterns shape love and desire, including Freud’s Oedipus complex and Jung’s archetypes.

Face trauma, loss, and transformation

Finally, you’ll investigate trauma, complexes and the wounded healer, then mourning, melancholia, the death drive, and the alchemical idea of transformation, drawing on myths such as Chiron and Orpheus.

Along the way you’ll draw, write, discuss and reflect, connecting each idea to your own life and relationships. These theories are historical frameworks rather than settled fact, so you’ll be invited to question them as well as use them.

Anyone curious about the mind, including those new to psychotherapy, people interested in personal growth, and students or practitioners in mental health, counselling, or the arts. No prior knowledge is needed.

Anyone curious about the mind, including those new to psychotherapy, people interested in personal growth, and students or practitioners in mental health, counselling, or the arts. No prior knowledge is needed.

• Describe key psychoanalytic and Jungian concepts, including the unconscious, id, ego, super-ego, self, shadow and individuation.
• Explain how early relationships and family experiences shape personality development, according to psychoanalytic and Jungian thinkers.
• Compare Freudian and Jungian approaches to dreams and their role in psychological life.
• Discuss psychoanalytic and Jungian ideas about love, desire, sexuality and intimate relationships.
• Explain psychoanalytic and Jungian perspectives on trauma, disrupted development and healing.
• Reflect on psychoanalytic and Jungian ideas about death, loss, mourning and transformation.
• Apply psychoanalytic and Jungian concepts to your own experiences, relationships and reflections.
• Evaluate the strengths and limitations of psychoanalytic and Jungian theories as ways of understanding the mind.