Reclaiming Our Roots: Jungian Analysts and Traditional Health Practitioners in Dialogue

This full-day workshop is born out of a 10-year sustained, in-depth dialogue between a small group of Jungian Analysts and African Traditional Healers in South Africa. During these years, this group has discussed and compared their respective training processes, and reflected on how they use intuition and dreams in their clinical practices.

In this process they have shared their respective experiences of their shared history in South Africa, such as the impact of colonialism and the Apartheid era. They have concluded that it is an ethical imperative for health practitioners in post-Apartheid South Africa, to address internalised prejudices, and to develop a respect for Indigenous Healing practices as having equal value to Western healing practices.

The programme is presented by Jungian Analysts Renee Ramsden (SAAJA) and Peter Ammann (ISAP Zurich), together with two remarkable guest speakers, Vella Maseko and Nompumelelo Kubeka, who live and work in both the worlds of modern psychology and traditional healing practices in South Africa. Fred Borchardt (SAAJA) will facilitate the panel discussion in the afternoon.

The workshop and panel discussion invites us into an exploration of the universal principles of healing and transformation as revealed in both Analytical Psychology and African Traditional Healing. Together, these presentations reveal a deep synergy between two traditions that may appear separate but are bound by shared principles of unity, correspondence, and transformation.

The day opens with a seminar by Renee Ramsden on The Emerald Tablet, an ancient text whose symbolic language illuminates the principles of reality, unity, and transformation. These themes provide a foundation for the seminars that follow on both Analytical Psychology and Indigenous healing traditions.

This will be followed by presentations by guest speakers Vella Maseko and Nompumelelo Kubeka, which will guide attendees into the wisdom of ancestral calling, the different types of ancestors and traditional healers. They will cover topics such as Abantu beliefs, the relationship between ancestors and the living, and the Ukuthwasa training process for healers.

We conclude with a lecture by international guest Dr. Peter Ammann exploring the affinities between Jungian psychology and African Traditional Healing. Both traditions emerge organically from primordial roots and reflect the archetypal depths of human experience rather than intellectual abstraction.

The panel discussion will focus around the historical challenges faced by indigenous practices in South Africa, and historical roots of these prejudices in Europe. Consciousness of the history of political trauma in South Africa is essential knowledge for any health practitioner in South Africa, and awareness of how this affects our clinical practice is an ethical imperative. These seminars will assist with enhancing an understanding of traditional healing practices and promoting cultural humility in working with clients from racially and culturally diverse backgrounds.