“Seldom or never does a marriage develop into an individual relationship smoothly and without crises. There is no birth of consciousness without pain.”

—C. G. Jung

Therapists and analysts, regardless of their training and orientation, continually seek generative ways to address the intense and often long-standing strife endemic to couples therapy. They know that working with couples places tremendous demands on their knowledge, their skill, and their own complicated feelings about the mysteries of relationship.

Jungian Couples Therapy is an 8-week course that offers participants fresh ways of thinking about what happens in the consulting room. The course re-imagines the room as a temenos guiding partners toward psychological wholeness, or what Jung termed the Self. The course’s central premise—emotionally-committed relationships are difficult, profound, meaningful, and full of soul—means that couples who bravely begin therapy and the therapists who guide them are working on behalf of soul regardless of the outcome.

This unique course teaches key concepts in Jung’s psychology as it applies to therapeutic work, offering participants more nuanced ways of working with the complex energies that arise between suffering partners. Through recorded lectures, written course materials, and live webinars with the instructors, participants will reimagine the couple’s plight—as well as their personal experience of relationship—as an unfolding creative process and a mystery to be lived.

What you will receive:

• 4 live webinar sessions with Q & A
• 8 pre-recorded lectures
• Graduate Certificate
• 8 CECs*

The course offers a blend of learning experiences: weekly pre-recorded audio lectures followed by a two-hour live webinars with the speakers every other week.

This course is ideal if: 

• You work in a therapeutic field with couples and want to incorporate Jungian and archetypal theory in your practice.

• You are a graduate student studying psychology or related disciplines and wish to deepen your understanding of Jungian couple therapy.

No previous knowledge or qualifications are required to register.

 

Course Schedule
The course begins on Monday January 5^th 2026 and ends on Saturday February 28^th, 2026. Each week participants will receive a one-hour pre-recorded lecture to study on their own, along with written course materials supporting the lecture. Every other week, on Saturday, the instructors will teach a 2-hour live webinar focused on the topics introduced during the lectures.

Pre-recorded lectures and live webinars (January and February 2026)
Eight topics explaining and exploring the core elements of Jungian theory as they apply to couples therapy. Includes 1-hour prerecorded lectures once per week and two-hour live Zoom session every other week, held on Saturday morning from 9:00 to 11:00 PDT.

The required text for the course is The Art of Jungian Couple Therapy, An Introduction (Routledge, 2025). Readings for each pre-recorded module are shown in the course schedule below.

Topics and schedule are as follows:

Week #1                          Monday January 5, 2026 pre-recorded lecture available, “The Self, Individuation, and Jungian Couple Therapy”
Required reading: Introduction and Chapter 1, “The Self, individuation, and Jungian couples therapy”

 

Week #2                          Monday January 12, 2026 pre-recorded lecture available “The Alchemy of Relationship”
Required reading: Chapter 6, “The alchemy of relationship”
Online Session           Saturday morning January 17, 2026, 9:00 to 11:00 PDT, first live webinar with instructors.

 

Week #3                          Monday January 19, 2026 pre-recorded lecture available, “Couples and Complexes”
Required reading: Chapter 2, “Couples and complexes”

 

Week #4                          Monday January 26, 2026 pre-recorded lecture available, “The Archetypal Basis of Coupled Life”
Required reading: Chapter 3, “The archetypal basis of coupled life”
Online Session           Saturday morning January 31, 2026, 9:00 to 11:00 PDT, second live webinar with instructors.

 

Week #5                          Monday February 2, 2026 pre-recorded lecture available, “Typology in Couples Therapy”
Required reading: Chapter 4, “Typology in couples therapy”

 

Week #6                          Monday February 9, 2026 pre-recorded lecture available, “The Shadow and the Couple”
Required reading: Chapter 5, “The shadow and the couple”
Online Session           Saturday morning February 14, 2026, 9:00 to 11:00 PDT, third live webinar with instructors.

 

Week #7                          Monday February 16, 2026 pre-recorded lecture available, “Diversity and Contemporary Coupling”
Required reading: Chapter 7, “Diversity and contemporary coupling”

 

Week #8                          Monday February 23, 2026 pre-recorded lecture available, “The Soul of the Therapist”
Required reading: Chapter 8, “Jung and the soul of the therapist”
Online Session           Saturday morning February 28, 2026, 9:00 to 11:00 PDT, final live webinar with instructors.

 

Individual Session Descriptions:

Week #1 – “The Self, Individuation, and Jungian Couple Therapy”

The first module invites participants to reimagine relationship in the broader contexts of meaning, purpose, and tending the soul: of each partner, the soul of their relationship, and therapist’s own soul. The goal of fixing or solving problems gives way to slow, patient exploration, transforming the felt sense of the work from cure into care in which the transferential relationship becomes an invaluable tool for insights into the couple’s plight.

 

Week #2 – “The Alchemy of Relationship”

The second module introduces Jung’s psychology of alchemy and alchemical vocabulary to show their relevance to relational dynamics. Therapists are invited to think like alchemists, imagining the work of couples therapy as a magnum opus of soul-making for each partner in relationship and for the relationship itself.

 

Week #3 – “Couples and Complexes”

The third module recasts couples’ interactions in light of underlying activated complexes in the partners. Complexes, which can last for minutes, hours, days or longer, form the matrix and minefield of an ever-changing intrapsychic climate and, by extension, inform nearly all relational dynamics. This chapter suggests ways to work with these intense energies.

 

Week #4 – “The Archetypal Basis of Coupled Life”

The fourth module describes the bipolar nature of archetypes, splitting, projection, and the frustrating tenacity of archetypal patterns of relating. Story becomes medicine as therapists deeply listen to the subtleties of each partner’s tales—about themselves, about each other, about the relationship—for their persistent archetypal themes and figures.

 

Week #5 – “Typology in Couples Therapy”

The fifth module introduces Jung’s theory of psychological types, exploring the two basic attitudes of introversion and extraversion and the four mental functions: sensing, thinking, feeling, and intuiting. It asks therapists to think typologically when considering what draws the partners together, what frustrates their efforts at communication over time, and how to help couples become more aware and supportive of their typological differences.

 

Week #6 – “The Shadow and the Couple”

The sixth module shows how Jung’s theory of the shadow and persona help therapists understand some of the intractable conflicts couples bring to therapy when their idealizations fall away. It reimagines Jung’s quaternity diagram to introduce the concept of shadow vows, which are the unacknowledged assumptions, agreements, and obligations each partner brings to the relationship.

 

Week #7 – “Diversity and Contemporary Coupling”

The seventh module explores how therapists can develop an affirmative practice that is sensitive to a wide range of relational styles and individual identities, as well as the cultural and political context which are crucial factors affecting people who do not conform to normative expectations. The ethical obligation to be self-aware is especially keen for therapists, since LGBTQ+ and relationally diverse patients easily challenge unconscious beliefs about how people should love one another.

 

Week #8 – “The Soul of the Therapist”

The final module describes the tremendous demands couples therapy places upon the whole being of the therapist due to the increased complexity of the container and the intense energies activated in the work. The discussion extends beyond usual and customary notions of self-care to discuss the deeper implications of Jungian couples work on the soul of the therapist.

 

CE Learning Objectives 

By the end of the course students will be able to: 

1. Describe how the goals of couple therapy can be expanded beyond behavioral and cognitive change to include depth-oriented and soul-centered dimensions of relational work.
2. Explain how key principles of Jungian and archetypal psychology can be integrated into contemporary approaches to couple therapy.
3. Analyze couple relationships as a potential path toward individuation, the realization of the Self, and the cultivation of soul.
4. Identify and interpret how complexes and archetypal patterns manifest in couples’ relational struggles, and demonstrate methods of working with these dynamics in the therapeutic process.
5. Apply Jungian typology to assess and understand fundamental sources of conflict and complementarity between partners.
6. Explain the parallels between the deep transformative processes of couple therapy and the alchemical model of psychological change.
7. Demonstrate awareness of the personal, social, and cultural dimensions influencing work with gender, sexual, and relationally diverse couples.
8. Evaluate the role of the therapist’s own psyche and symbolic awareness in facilitating deeper and more sustainable therapeutic engagement with couples.

 

SCHEDULE FOR LIVE ONLINE LEARNING SESSIONS

Live Zoom Session #1: Saturday, January 17, 2026 – 9:00 – 11:00 AM Pacific Time

Live Zoom Session #2: Saturday, January 31, 2026 – 9:00 – 11:00 AM Pacific Time

Live Zoom Session #3: Saturday, February 14, 2026 – 9:00 – 11:00 AM Pacific Time

Live Zoom Session #4: Saturday, February 28, 2026 – 9:00 – 11:00 AM Pacific Time

 

Required & Recommended Readings

Required reading:

Nelson, E. & Delmedico, A. The Art of Jungian Couple Therapy, An Introduction (Routledge, 2025)

 

Recommended readings :

Essays 

Hillman, James, “Marriage, Intimacy, Freedom” (Spring, 60, pp. 1–11)

Jung, C. G. “The Psychology of the Transference” (CW 16, paras. 353–539)

Jung, C.G. “Marriage as a Psychological Relationship” (CW 17, paras. 324–345)

Nelson, Elizabeth & Delmedico, Anthony, “When Left Hands Touch: Shadow Vows and Jung’s Quaternity” (Journal of Analytical Psychology, 68, 1 pp. 48–70)

Books 

Corbett, Lionel, The Religious Function of the Psyche

Downing, Christine, Myth and Mysteries of Same Sex Love

Edinger, Edward Ego and Archetype

Edinger, Edward, Anatomy of the Psyche

Nelson, Elizabeth, Psyche’s Knife: Archetypal explorations of Love and Power

Stein, Murray, Jung’s Map of the Soul

Young-Eisendrath, Polly, Hags and Heroes: A Feminist Approach to Jungian Psychotherapy with Couples

Fairy tales 

The myth of Psyche and Eros

The Grimm’s tale The Girl with Silver Hands

The Arthurian tale Sir Gawain and the Lady Ragnell