Listening to the Unconscious – Listening to the Ancestors

About the Archetypal Roots of Jungian Psychology

Presenter: Dr Peter Ammann

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.

Dr Peter Ammann is a founding member of the International School for Analytical Psychology (ISAPZURICH), 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. Simultaneously, he completed his doctorate at the University of Zürich in the fields of musicology, history of religion and ethnology. He maintains a practice in Zürich and lectures regularly in many countries.

His 1984 encounter with Laurens van der Post inspired his enduring interests in Africa, the Bushpeople, their rock paintings, and in African Traditional Healing. Since 1990, when he was invited by Vera Bührmann to give seminars in Cape Town, he regularly lectures here and made several documentary films and DVDs related to Southern Africa, for example Spirits of the Rocks; Hlonipa – Journey into Wilderness; Vera Bührmann – Living in two Worlds; Healing in two Worlds – Jungian Psychotherapists encounter African Traditional Healers; Encounter the Other – Jungian Analysts and African Traditional Healers in Dialogue; What my Power Figures tell me – A Journey through the Darkness of the Heart to the Mirror of the Belly.

In recent years, Peter continued his groundbreaking initiative with several conferences where Jungian Analysts and African Traditional Healers engage in an ongoing dialogue. Together with Nomfundo Mlisa, Renee Ramsden and Fred Borchardt he presented this work in Vienna at the IAAP Congress 2019.

Peter Ammann is a highly regarded friend of SAAJA and is an honorary member.