The Irish Analytical Psychology Association was established in July 1996 by a small group of Jungian analysts and psychotherapists to represent and promote the understanding and development of analytical psychology in Ireland. In 1998 the I.A.P.A. was officially accepted as a Developing Group within the International Association for Analytical Psycholoy. The I.A.P.A. was admitted to the I.C.P., the Irish Council of Psychotherapy, in 2000 as the official professional body representing Jungian psychology in Ireland.

The I.A.P.A. encourages high standards of professional training and practice within analytical psychology in Ireland. With this purpose in mind, it maintains a Register of Members recognised by the I.A.P.A. as competent to practice in their profession as either Jungian Analysts or Analytical Psychotherapists. The I.A.P.A. also provides a supportive and friendly professional framework for its members.

Analytical, or Jungian Psychology is based upon the ideas of Dr. Carl Gustav Jung, a Swiss psychiatrist (1875-1961). Jung had a working relationship with Freud from 1906-1913 and was the first elected President of the International Psychoanalytic Association. Their collaboration ended when Jung developed psychological theories that departed from Freud’s views. While they agreed about the concepts of the personal unconscious, the complexes and much of Freud’s developmental theory, Jung’s emphasis was different. He saw the unconscious as complementary to and communicating with consciousness, rather than as a mere repository of repressed experience. Jung believed that analysis should be a dialectical relationship between two people, working together to alleviate the client’s psychic condition through a process of discovering and integrating the unconscious aspects of the personality.