About Suzanne

Jungian analytical therapist | Sandplay therapist in training (ISST) | research & storyteller | member of DIEN

Education

BSc Behavioural Neuroscience at Sussex University (UK), MA Media at Sydney University (AU), Jungian Psychology at Jung Academy Amsterdam, second year candidate NAAP (IAAP), Sandplay (ISST).

Philosophy

Central to my view of why we pursue therapy is an inherent longing to return to soul. Although we might start with a desire and need to free ourselves from restricting patterns, inherent to soul is a deeper belonging, both within ourselves and within the larger ecology of life.

Personal Background

Since my youth I have been interested in how things are connected, and what story is being told. I made my own little studies by observing the natural world, reading and following a gut instinct. That instinct first told me the world is alive in a way I could feel but not yet explain. When I was 8 years old I asked my father what happens when you die. While he said ‘nothing’, I experienced something infinite. I did not understand it, but examples like these kept me wondering about the nature of life. I followed a deep passion for the Earth and studied Behavioural Neuroscience with a focus on ethology. I pursued an MA in communications to nurture my love for writing and spent a few miserable and wonderful years in corporate life. In my late twenties, I poured both studies into wildlife documentary filmmaking with the intention to connect people into appreciation for and awe of the beauty of Earth.

Psyche and Soma

Pregnancy and motherhood opened me up into unknown spaces, light and dark. While searching for a reflection to explain and contain my experiences, I stepped into many ‘new age’ traps before encountering Jungian psychology, the mythopoetic and a Sufi lineage, all within one month. Aided by bodywork, this period reinvigorated my passion for the world of story that had seeded itself in childhood through reading, writing and dreaming. I immersed into the world of the feminine psyche. I also began to learn the oral art of storytelling at the Anima Mundi School.

Research & work: the Anima Mundi

Today, this interdisciplinary braiding of Jungian psychology, Sufi mysticism, the natural sciences and the feminine psyche express themselves in my research and work through a therapeutic approach that honours both spirit (psyche) and matter (body) as one.

I collaborate in workshops with the Mothership in Hamburg where we immerse and explore the mysteries of psyche and matter via an interdisciplinary fusion of storytelling, art and music.

I am also making my re-entree in the academic life. My research is an attempt to shed more light on our relationship with the Anima Mundi (latin for Soul of the World) through the field of perception and sense-participation as both an outer and inner experience, set within a Jungian framework in which it remains as yet underdeveloped.

To learn more about the (feminine) psyche, please read some of my articles.