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Jung Southern Africa - SAAJA

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Contact information, map and directions, contact form, opening hours, services, ratings, photos, videos and announcements from Jung Southern Africa - SAAJA, Mental Health Service, C. G. Jung Centre, 87 Main Road, Rondebosch, Cape Town.

The Southern African Association of Jungian Analysts (SAAJA) is a professional society of accredited Jungian Analysts affiliated with the International Association of Jungian Analysts (IAAP), based in Cape Town.

09/12/2025

Returning to wholeness through embodiment invites us to reclaim the sacred unity of mind, body, and spirit, a journey that echoes the ancient alchemical process of transforming fragmented lead into radiant gold within the crucible of our own being. Just as the infant emerges from the womb's protective embrace, experiencing the world first through the rhythmic warmth of the mother's breast, where nourishment symbolises not mere sustenance but the profound bond of love and security, we too must rediscover our embodied self as the vessel for emotional and psychic integration.

In my practice I have witnessed how the shadow of disconnection, born from early ruptures in attachment, where the body becomes a battleground for unexpressed pain, anxiety, or unacknowledged instincts, manifests as alienation from our physical form, leading us to treat it as a mere shell rather than a living archetype of the anima, the intuitive feminine wisdom that grounds us in the earth's nurturing rhythms. Embodiment calls us to listen to the subtle whispers of our sensations: the flutter of joy in the chest, the ache of unresolved grief in the gut, or the instinctive urge to move and create, allowing these to weave together the disparate threads of our psyche into a tapestry of wholeness.

Through mindful practices, be it savouring a simple meal with full presence, engaging in rhythmic dance that mirrors the heartbeat of maternal care, or confronting the symbolic 'mother image' we carry within, we transcend the Cartesian split of mind over body, fostering self-compassion and resilience. In this return, we honour the archetype of the Great Mother, not as a distant memory but as an alive, embodied force, guiding us toward individuation where every breath and movement becomes a step into authentic, integrated living.

~ Written by Konrad van Staden, Jungian Analyst and Clinical Psychologist ()

Image credit: AI-generated

08/12/2025

Our Quote of the Week.

“Body awareness, as I understand it, has nothing to do with the technology of the body. It is not fitness or longevity that is at stake, although these may be by-products. What is at stake is the integration of body, soul and spirit.”

~ Marion Woodman, 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘗𝘳𝘦𝘨𝘯𝘢𝘯𝘵 𝘝𝘪𝘳𝘨𝘪𝘯: 𝘈 𝘗𝘳𝘰𝘤𝘦𝘴𝘴 𝘰𝘧 𝘗𝘴𝘺𝘤𝘩𝘰𝘭𝘰𝘨𝘪𝘤𝘢𝘭 𝘛𝘳𝘢𝘯𝘴𝘧𝘰𝘳𝘮𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯, p. 55

04/12/2025

Book Report | How do body and psyche communicate the effects of carrying repressed hurt or unacknowledged truth? How do they express the innate desire to live free of suffering? One way is through illness.

In 1991 Dr Anne Maguire published a book later translated and published in English as Skin Disease: A Message from the Soul, a Treatise from a Jungian Perspective of Psychosomatic Dermatology. After dermatology she trained as a Jungian analyst. She found that while the unconscious or psyche had been accepted as a reality after much research in the 19th and 20th centuries, medical doctors still worked as if there was no connection between a patient’s physical ailments and their inner world. This book with its many case studies shows otherwise.

Maguire begins her well referenced chapters with a brief history of skin. Our ancestors used animals in sacrifices. The skin of sacred animals was revered as representing the sacred power of the animal. Skin is a contact layer between our inner being and the outer world. It’s in constant transformation as it sheds, renews, ages and reflects the health of the body.

In Part II Maguire describes the presentation on the body of several skin diseases – eczema, urticaria, psoriasis, lichen planus, alopecia areata and totalis, erythroderma and some others. Skin ailments are the psyche’s attempt to draw attention to an unconscious problem. She cites numerous cases of prolonged suffering that healed once the patient came to terms with an inner conflict of which they had been unaware. With consciousness came healing and the patient gained a new life.

The cases with their outcomes cannot be extrapolated on to other patients. Each person has a unique balance of illness and psychic conditions at a particular time. Maguire quotes Jung: “synchronicity designates the parallelism of time and meaning between psychic and psychophysical events, which scientific knowledge so far has been unable to reduce to a common principle.”[1] “[N]o reciprocal causal connection can be shown to obtain between parallel events, which is just what gives them their chance character.”[2] Each person finds an answer to the question ‘what does psyche want’[3]?

~ Book report written by Debra West, Librarian, Jean Albert Library, CG Jung Centre

1. P. 58
2. P. 58
3. P. 201

Bibliography:
Maguire, Anne (2004) Skin Disease: A Message from the Soul. United Kingdom: Free Association Books.

Jean Albert Library - Visitors are welcome
The Jean Albert Library at the Jung Centre has an impressive collection of books on a wide variety of Jungian topics. It’s open on Tuesdays 10am - 2pm, and on Thursdays from 2pm - 7pm. Becoming a member allows one to borrow books and audio-visual materials. Explore at https://jungsouthernafrica.co.za/jean-albert-library/

02/12/2025

“The burning question when one enters analysis is ‘Who am I?’ The immediate problem, however, as soon as powerful emotions begin to surface, is often a psyche/soma split. While women tend to talk about their bodies more than men, both sexes in our culture are grievously unrelated to their own body experience. Women say, ‘I don’t like this body’; men say, ‘It hurts.’ Their use of the third-person neuter pronoun in referring to their body makes quite clear their sense of alienation…

The body had become the whipping post. If the person is anxious, the body is starved, gorged, drugged, intoxicated, forced to vomit, driven into exhaustion or frenzied reaction against self-destruction. When this magnificent animal attempts to send up warning signals, it is silenced with pills.

Many people can listen to their cat more intelligently than they can listen to their own despised body. Because they attend to their pet in a cherishing way, it returns their love. Their body, however, may have to let out an earth-shattering scream in order to be heard at all…

It is possible that the scream that comes from the forsaken body, the scream that manifests in a symptom, is the cry of the soul that can find no other way to be heard. If we have lived behind a mask all our lives, sooner or later—if we are lucky—the mask will be smashed. Then we will have to look in our own mirror at our own reality.

Perhaps we will be appalled. Perhaps we will look into the terrified eyes of our own tiny child, that child who has never known love and who now beseeches us to respond. The child is alone, forsaken before we left the womb, or at birth, or when we began to please our parents and learned to put on our best performance in order to be accepted. As life progresses, we may continue to abandon our child by pleasing others—teachers, professors, bosses, friends, partners, even analysts. That child who is our very soul cries out from underneath the rubble of our lives, begging us to say, ‘You are not alone. I love you.”

~ Marion Woodman, ‘The Pregnant Virgin: A Process of Psychological Transformation’, pp. 24 - 25.

Extended Quote sourced by Charlotte Hoffman (.analyst)

Image Credit: Title unknown, illustration by Chinese artist Hao Hao

01/12/2025

Our Quote of the Week.

“Many people can listen to their cat more intelligently than they can listen to their own despised body. Because they attend to their pet in a cherishing way, it returns their love. Their body, however, may have to let out an earth-shattering scream in order to be heard at all.”

~ Marion Woodman, from 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘗𝘳𝘦𝘨𝘯𝘢𝘯𝘵 𝘝𝘪𝘳𝘨𝘪𝘯: 𝘈 𝘗𝘳𝘰𝘤𝘦𝘴𝘴 𝘰𝘧 𝘗𝘴𝘺𝘤𝘩𝘰𝘭𝘰𝘨𝘪𝘤𝘢𝘭 𝘛𝘳𝘢𝘯𝘴𝘧𝘰𝘳𝘮𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯, p. 25

27/11/2025

𝙏𝙞𝙣𝙘𝙩𝙪𝙧𝙚, 𝘈𝘯𝘥𝘳𝘦𝘢 𝘎𝘪𝘣𝘴𝘰𝘯 (1975 - 2025)

Imagine when a human dies the soul misses the body
Actually grieves the loss of its hands
And all they could hold
Misses the throat closing shy
Reading out loud on the first day of school

Imagine the soul misses the stubbed toe
The loose tooth
The funny bone
The soul still asks
“Why does the funny bone do that?
It’s just weird.”

Imagine the soul misses the thirsty garden cheeks
Watered by grief
Misses how the body could sleep through a dream
What else can sleep through a dream
What else can laugh
What else can wrinkle the smile’s autograph
Imagine the soul misses each falling eyelash
Waiting to be wished
Misses the wrist screaming away the blade
The soul misses the lisp
The stutter
The limp
The soul misses the holy bruise
Blue from that army of blood rushing to the wound’s side
When a human dies
The soul searches the universe for something blushing
Something shaking in the cold
Something that scars
Sweeps the universe for patience worn thin
The last nerve fighting for its life
The voice box aching to be heard

The soul misses the way the body would hold another body
And not be two bodies but one pleading God doubled in grace
The soul misses how the mind told the body
“You have fallen from grace.”
And the body said, “Erase every scripture that doesn’t have a pulse
There isn’t a single page in the Bible that can wince
That can clumsy
That can freckle
That can hunger.”

Imagine the soul misses hunger
Emptiness
Rage
The fist that was never taught to curl, curls
The teeth that were never taught to clench, clench
The body that was never taught to make love, makes love
Like a hungry ghost digging its way out of the grave
The soul misses the un-forever of old age
The skin that no longer fits
The soul misses every single day the body was sick
The now it forced
The here it built from the fever
Fever is how the body prays
How it burns and begs for another average day

The soul misses the legs creaking up the stairs
Misses the fear that climbed up the vocal chords
To curse the wheelchair
The soul misses what the body could not let go
What else could hold on that tightly to everything
What else could hear the chain of a swing set and fall to its knees
What else could touch a screen door and taste lemonade
What else could come back from a war and not come back
But still try to live
Still try to lullaby

When a human dies the soul moves through the universe
Trying to describe how a body trembles when it’s lost
Softens when it’s safe
How a wound would heal given nothing but time

Do you understand
Nothing in space can imagine it
No comet
No nebula
No ray of light can fathom the landscape of awe
The heat of shame
The fingertips pulling the first grey hair
And throwing it away
“I can’t imagine it.”
The stars say

“Tell us again about goosebumps.
Tell us again about pain.”

~ Poem by Andrea Gibson

Image Credit: Photograph by Liana S via Unsplash

25/11/2025

“Your body isn’t just physical. It’s psychic. It’s electric. It’s the place where Spirit incarnates into form.

What we can’t feel doesn’t vanish — it waits.

The nervous system doesn’t track time the way the mind does.

When something overwhelms us — rage, terror, neglect, a fierce betrayal — the body pauses the experience until it’s safe to feel again.

Somatic psychology calls this implicit memory: the stored, unspoken residues of a life lived.

The emptiness in the heart.
The closing in the throat.
The restlessness in the belly.
The tears that come “out of nowhere.”

These are not evidence of error, mistake, or failure. They are the appearance of the ally — an emissary of wholeness, a guide of integration.

They are not obstacles on the path, but the path itself — revealing that the Beloved is infinite in its manifestations and will appear in whatever form it must to find us and open us into its mysteries.

A portal opens in the body, in soul, with the signpost reading: Now is a moment when healing is possible.

The wound must be open in order for the medicine to reach it.”

~ Original post by psychotherapist and author Matt Licata, PhD (shared with credit to )

Image Credit: Acrylic painting by the German artist Moki Mioke, featured in her book 𝘏𝘰𝘸 𝘵𝘰 𝘋𝘪𝘴𝘢𝘱𝘱𝘦𝘢𝘳.

24/11/2025

Our Quote of the Week.

“One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.”

~ Carl Gustav Jung, 𝘊𝘰𝘭𝘭𝘦𝘤𝘵𝘦𝘥 𝘞𝘰𝘳𝘬𝘴 13, para. 335

___________

In recognition of the growing movement calling for decisive action against gender-based violence, championed by organisations like Women For Change (), we pause to honour the lives impacted and the voices calling for change.

May deeper consciousness, compassion, and collective responsibility guide our shared path toward safety and justice.

20/11/2025

The body as a vessel of silenced truth finds a potent metaphor in the Greek myth of Cassandra, the prophetess whose true visions were condemned to disbelief. Her story mirrors the tension between inner knowing and outer invalidation, when intuitive or embodied insight is dismissed by consciousness or the collective. This split between what the body knows and what will be acknowledged often forces the unspoken truth into somatic expression.

Somatically, Cassandra’s wound is frequently felt in the throat and chest, where the impulse to speak meets constriction. Tightness in the throat, restricted breath, or pressure in the chest become physical correlates of the psychic command ‘to know, but disavowed’. These are not simply psychosomatic disturbances but symbolic enactments of a pattern: the prophetess’s voice trapped within the body. When the ego resists unconscious material, it often manifests through the body.

The Cassandra complex is both psychological and physiological: a struggle between intuition and the learned prohibition against trusting it. Healing involves restoring dialogue between psyche and soma, treating bodily sensations as messages rather than malfunctions. Through breathwork, somatic awareness, and inner listening, the silenced voice can re-emerge as grounded, felt truth. When its message is finally received, the body no longer needs to carry the prophecy through pain.

Somatic knowing - the body’s intuitive registration of truth before conscious awareness - often appears as gut unease, limb tremors, or sudden breath contraction. When such signals are repeatedly invalidated by social or familial contexts, individuals may internalize disbelief, leading to chronic tension, anxiety, or fatigue.

There is a deep intimacy between voice, body, and truth. The body bears what cannot yet be spoken; when that inner voice is reclaimed, the body transforms from a site of symptom into an instrument of knowing. Interoception - the body’s ability to sense its internal states and register what is happening inside in real time - extends far beyond simple awareness of hunger, fatigue, distress, and physiological processes. The body speaks the truth.

~ Written by Denise Grobbelaar, , Clinical Psychologist & Jungian Analyst

Image credit: ‘The Broken Column’ (1944) by Frida Kahlo

18/11/2025

The body has ways of expressing our psyche’s difficulties. Yet men are often quite disconnected from their bodies.

In the story of the Fisher King, the King’s land has become barren: crops are failing, animals are dying, and rivers are drying up. The King also has a wound in his thigh that will not heal. He is too sick to live fully, yet not sick enough to die. He exists in perpetual suffering, finding peace only when he is fishing.

Wounds to the foot, leg, or groin appear often in masculine myths: Achilles, wounded in the heel; Chiron, struck in the thigh; Philoctetes, bitten on the foot and banished to an island; Oedipus, has his ankles pierced. These are injuries that interfere with a man’s ability to be grounded, to move with agency, to stand strong, and to feel connected to his instinctual and creative potentials. Like his kingdom, the Fisher King’s vitality has dried up, and his pain is all he has.

The tale tells us that the Fisher King has access to healing through the Holy Grail, presented to him every night, yet he cannot take in its gift. Robert Johnson explains that the Grail symbolizes the feminine principle of feeling, relatedness, and receptivity. Though the source of renewal is near, he is too caught in his pain to receive it.

Yet, if the King could listen to his wound rather than try to escape it, it might reveal its meaning. His suffering is challenging his relationship with his pain and his idea of bravery, and calling him back to what he has forgotten: the body, the feeling life, the feminine. His suffering, then, is not punishment but an invitation to a new consciousness.

In the tale, healing begins only when Parsifal, a knight initiated into the realm of life’s suffering and compassion, asks him the right question: “What ails thee, Uncle?” Such a simple question, but conveying a willingness to listen. Likewise, our bodies may be asking us to consider what purpose our physical pain serves, what imbalance it’s expressing, and what wholeness it seeks to restore.

~ Written by Austin Smith, Clinical Psychologist and Jungian Analyst

Image Credit: Priam at the Feet of Achilles (1809), Jérôme-Martin Langlois

References:
Johnson, R. A. (1993). ‘The Fisher King and the Handless Maiden: Understanding the wounded feeling function in masculine and feminine psychology’. HarperCollins

17/11/2025

Our Quote of the Week.

“The symbols of the Self arise in the depths of the body and they express its materiality every bit as much as the structure of the perceiving consciousness. The symbol is thus a living body, corpus et anima…”

~ CG Jung, 𝘊𝘰𝘭𝘭𝘦𝘤𝘵𝘦𝘥 𝘞𝘰𝘳𝘬𝘴 9i, para. 291

14/11/2025

𝑭𝑰𝑵𝑨𝑳 𝑹𝑬𝑴𝑰𝑵𝑫𝑬𝑹 𝑻𝑶 𝑹𝑬𝑮𝑰𝑺𝑻𝑬𝑹 | For our 𝗳𝗶𝗻𝗮𝗹 𝗣𝘂𝗯𝗹𝗶𝗰 𝗣𝗿𝗼𝗴𝗿𝗮𝗺𝗺𝗲 𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗼𝗳 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝘆𝗲𝗮𝗿, we are honoured to welcome internationally renowned Jungian somatics expert, Jane Clapp (), who will be presenting an immersive online workshop titled 𝗦𝗼𝘂𝗹 𝗶𝗻 𝗠𝗼𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻: 𝗖𝗼𝗻𝗻𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗦𝗲𝗹𝗳 𝘁𝗵𝗿𝗼𝘂𝗴𝗵 𝗘𝗺𝗯𝗼𝗱𝗶𝗲𝗱 𝗘𝘅𝗽𝗲𝗿𝗶𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲.

This experiential event invites participants to explore heartbreak arising from suffering, trauma, and spiritual injury through the movement of psyche - the 𝘬𝘪𝘯𝘦𝘵𝘪𝘤 𝘴𝘱𝘪𝘳𝘪𝘵. Drawing on the principles of Jungian Somatics™, Jane will guide us into a deeper experience of embodied faith, wholeness, and sacred connection in everyday life.

Through movement, creative expression, and embodied active imagination, participants will be introduced to the body as a vessel for transformation. Jane’s practice of 𝘚𝘰𝘶𝘭 𝘪𝘯 𝘔𝘰𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 opens a pathway into the living dialogue between body and psyche, seen and unseen, conscious and unconscious.

Join us for this rare opportunity to experience Jane’s pioneering work at the intersection of depth psychology, somatics, and spiritual healing.

✨Format: Online via Zoom
✨Date: Tuesday, 18 November 2025
✨Time: 7.30pm - 9pm SAST (UTC +2)
✨Participation fee: ZAR300
✨Booking is essential

Learn more and book online via this link: https://www.jungsouthernafrica.co.za/event/soul-in-motion-connecting-with-the-self-through-embodied-experience/

𝗣𝗹𝗲𝗮𝘀𝗲 𝗡𝗼𝘁𝗲:
- 𝘗𝘢𝘳𝘵𝘪𝘤𝘪𝘱𝘢𝘯𝘵𝘴 𝘸𝘪𝘭𝘭 𝘯𝘦𝘦𝘥 𝘴𝘰𝘮𝘦 𝘰𝘱𝘦𝘯 𝘧𝘭𝘰𝘰𝘳 𝘴𝘱𝘢𝘤𝘦, 𝘴𝘪𝘹 𝘣𝘭𝘢𝘯𝘬 𝘴𝘩𝘦𝘦𝘵𝘴 𝘰𝘧 𝘱𝘢𝘱𝘦𝘳, 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘥𝘳𝘢𝘸𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘮𝘢𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘪𝘢𝘭𝘴 (𝘴𝘶𝘤𝘩 𝘢𝘴 𝘤𝘳𝘢𝘺𝘰𝘯𝘴, 𝘱𝘢𝘴𝘵𝘦𝘭𝘴, 𝘰𝘳 𝘤𝘰𝘭𝘰𝘶𝘳𝘦𝘥 𝘱𝘦𝘯𝘤𝘪𝘭𝘴) 𝘵𝘰 𝘦𝘯𝘨𝘢𝘨𝘦 𝘪𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘦𝘹𝘱𝘦𝘳𝘪𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘪𝘢𝘭 𝘱𝘳𝘢𝘤𝘵𝘪𝘤𝘦𝘴.
- 𝘐𝘧 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘯𝘰𝘵 𝘢𝘣𝘭𝘦 𝘵𝘰 𝘫𝘰𝘪𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘭𝘪𝘷𝘦 𝘷𝘪𝘳𝘵𝘶𝘢𝘭 𝘱𝘳𝘦𝘴𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯, 𝘳𝘦𝘤𝘰𝘳𝘥𝘪𝘯𝘨𝘴 𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘴𝘩𝘢𝘳𝘦𝘥 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩 𝘢𝘭𝘭 𝘳𝘦𝘨𝘪𝘴𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘦𝘥 𝘱𝘢𝘳𝘵𝘪𝘤𝘪𝘱𝘢𝘯𝘵𝘴 𝘵𝘸𝘰 𝘵𝘰 𝘵𝘩𝘳𝘦𝘦 𝘣𝘶𝘴𝘪𝘯𝘦𝘴𝘴 𝘥𝘢𝘺𝘴 𝘢𝘧𝘵𝘦𝘳 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘯𝘵.

Address

C. G. Jung Centre, 87 Main Road, Rondebosch
Cape Town
7700

Opening Hours

Monday	09:00 - 15:00
Tuesday	09:00 - 15:00
Wednesday	09:00 - 15:00
Thursday	09:00 - 15:00
Friday	09:00 - 14:00

Telephone

+27 (0)21 6896090

Website

http://www.jungsouthernafrica.co.za/

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