The University of Essex will host its annual C.G. Jung Lecture on Tuesday, March 17, 2026, featuring Professor Andrew Samuels in a significant homecoming. Samuels, who in 1995 became one of the first holders of a UK chair in Jungian Studies at Essex, will deliver a critical late-career assessment of the field he helped establish. His lecture, titled “What has changed in academic Jungian studies and clinical Jungian analysis since 1995? Has anything changed? Does anything need to change?“, marks a major milestone three decades after his groundbreaking appointment.
The 1995 appointments of Samuels and Renos Papadopoulos to chairs at Essex fundamentally altered the landscape of depth psychology in British academia, elevating Jungian thought from the margins to mainstream scholarly discourse. Now, more than thirty years later, Samuels will use this platform to examine whether the integration of clinical and academic work he championed has fulfilled its promise.
Central to his lecture will be a challenge to what he calls the “traditional prejudice” separating the consulting room from the classroom- the assumption that clinicians lack theoretical rigor while academics lack emotional depth. Revisiting his provocative 1995 job application claim that “the academy is the best therapist for the clinic,” Samuels will explore the vital role of the “all-rounder” who moves fluidly between both spheres. He will also examine how this integration has influenced broader fields including politics, sexuality, and spirituality.
As a relational Jungian psychoanalyst and political consultant who has advised the National Health Service and co-founded organisations like Analysis and Activism, Samuels brings unique credentials to discuss the “political psyche”—a theme he explores further in his 2025 publications, Reflecting Critically on the Political Psyche and the anniversary edition of his classic work, The Father.
The lecture continues a distinguished series at Essex’s Department of Psychosocial and Psychoanalytic Studies, widely regarded as a gold standard for interdisciplinary psychological study. The 2025 lecture featured Lucy Huskinson on “Navigating Academic Egos and Therapeutic Spaces: some reflections from nearly 30 years at the front line of Jungian studies,” which examined ego inflation and institutional pressures through Jungian and Nietzschean philosophy, themes Huskinson has explored extensively in her scholarly work on Nietzsche and Jung. The series began in 2023 with an inaugural lecture by Professor Papadopoulos titled “The (Ir)relevance of Jungian Theories in Academic Contexts: Critical Reflections.”
The event runs from 6pm to 7.30pm London Time and is free to the public with advance registration which you can do here.