Patrick Burnett

I see Jungian psychotherapy as a place where people have the opportunity to deeply explore their own mind and motivations in a setting that is supportive, empathic and completely non-judgmental. I believe that the human mind is able to heal itself and bring itself back into balance given the right circumstances.

This approach allows my clients to organically move to the areas that they need to in order to move forward in their lives. I encourage people to bring the everyday events of their life to our sessions. Then, in session, to just relax and let their mind and emotions fluidly “choose” what they “need” to talk about without too much “thinking about” what “should” be talked about.

Over a period of time, the ritual and routine of our work and the thinking and feeling about it in between sessions, leads to a deeply reflective process being activated. The process often seems to take on “a life of its own”. Together we explore dreams, fantasy life, internal thinking processes and conversations, internal reactions to everyday and past events and, importantly, past and present relationships. I also work with the body by asking about the bodily reactions to the things that we talk about during our sessions. We also explore the relationship to me as the therapist as this can often repeat some of the relational patterns that have been set up over a lifetime.

Gradually and patiently, we tease out the meaning and understanding of the internal processes, patterns and external outlook to life’s events. As you can imagine, this is not a short term process. How long the work takes depends on the individual.

I have been working as an Jungian Analyst for fifteen years. My training took place at The C.G. Jung Institute, Zürich, Switzerland. Now, as a senior Jungian analyst within the Australian and New Zealand Society of Jungian Analysts and as a Training Analyst with the C.G. Jung Institute of ANZSJA, I am engaged in selecting, training, examining and supervising trainee Jungian Analysts. My practice also involves supervising psychologists and psychotherapists in their psychotherapeutic work.