Jung Forum: Clouds of Knowing: Dreaming Healing into Being

Speaker: Dr Birgit Heuer

Chair: Ann Kutek

This paper was presented at the 2025 IAAP Congress in Zurich and offers what I have learned about the intricacies and processes of healing over 45 years of clinical practice.

As a profession, we have honed our knowledge of what may go wrong in a person’s development and inner world, yet our model of healing itself needs attention. My doctoral research into clinical language and narrative of case histories shows an underlying world-view that tends to be pessimistic and antagonistic, making it too similar to the inner world of trauma that many of our patients bring.

Arts-based research currently represents the most fluid approach to any enquiry and I take this to the Jungian clinic to suggest an outlook that is more conducive to healing, deep positivity. Based in quantum logic and complexity theory, this is profoundly hopeful whilst also able to embrace suffering and struggle. Here I employ science to evoke a confluence of head and heart and ultimately nourish our hearts with hope.

With this, the tides shift and the time-honored grail question ‘what ails you?’ flows towards ‘what heals you?’ I will also explore how an arts-based/heart-based approach might unfold in the clinical hour.

About the speaker

Dr Birgit Heuer is a BJAA Jungian Analyst with a previous training in body-oriented psychotherapy. She has been in private practice for the past forty-five years. She served on the BJAA training committee and worked as clinical supervisor at Kingston University. She has taught on several Jungian-analytic trainings, as well as on Jungian MA’s. She has published numerous papers (Journal of Analytical Psychology, Self & Society, et al.) and book-chapters (Christopher & Solomon, eds., Contemporary Jungian Clinical Practice, 2003; Stein, ed., Jungian Psychoanalysis, 2010; Heuer, ed., Sacral Revolutions, 2010; et al.), and her PhD is on Sanatology, a Clinical Paradigm of Health and Healing. She has lectured internationally on themes such as ‘body and being’, ‘forgiveness’, ‘spirituality in the consulting-room’ and on ‘clinical paradigm’.

*If you are a psychotherapist or counsellor residing in an active conflict zone, you are eligible to attend this event free of charge (regardless of whether you are a bpf member or not). Please email events@bpf-psychotherapy to enquire about a ticket.