Jan Lee: A Journey of Individuation

Jan first encountered Jung when she was 17. She found two volumes in German of his Collected Works at home. She had no idea of how they came to be in the family home. But she read them with her usual single-minded determination. She returned to Jung many years later after journeying through Buddhism and Sufism and trying to grapple with Mysterium Coniunctionis - Jung's last book - an exploration into the processes of differentiating, combining and transcending opposites and differences. For Jan there was no gap between analytical psychology and life. The former offered her a way of life and a way of trying to understand herself and others. Passionate about mining the seam of psyche, Jan was committed to the intense struggle needed to combine the riches of the pluralistic training which she had received at The Guild with the more singular focus on the work of Jung which, to some extent, she found at the Society of Analytical Psychology. But, wishing to unearth ever deeper levels, she embarked on a Clinical Doctorate at the University of Essex. After qualifying in 2001 at the SAP, she soon joined the staff of the Foundation Course, and conducted seminars in the Adult Training on countertransference.

In her daily work, Jan created a containment that combined the strength and flexibility of the bamboo and that enabled her to engage with people in desperate distress with all its attendant psychic pain and internal violence. She worked from a wellspring of compassion, infused by a keen intellect, her feeling-toned thoughts sometimes leavened with a delightful sense of humour - sometimes hidden but always present. Whilst listening intently, Jan relied almost entirely in her work on the inner film running in her mind. She dwelt in the imaginal world. It was from a single image or series of images that she offered her patients and supervisees a thought that might nudge into life a moment of understanding, an awareness of choice, the possibility of life-enhancing change - not