Ann Shearer
Ann Shearer has worked for some 25 years as a Jungian analyst in private practice and a teacher in the UK and abroad. Before that, she was a journalist and international consultant in social welfare. She has written 10 very readable books about different subjects along the way, as well as chapters and many articles for different journals. Communicating with and learning from others around ideas and experience has been a life-long passion.
Biography
Ann counts herself privileged to have had so many opportunities to work with such a variety of other people who are seeking to understand more about what makes human beings tick. What brings humans together in cooperation and goodwill, and what drives them apart in suspicion, rejection and hatred? These seem to her to be the most important questions of our time, both within individuals and between them. The search for answers led her first to campaigning, consulting and writing on behalf of socially marginalised people, especially those with learning disabilities. Exploring how communities could become more inclusive was the theme of her early books. The philosopher Mary Warnock said of Disability: Whose handicap? that it was ‘extraordinarily readable... everyone ought to read it.’As a psychotherapist/Jungian analyst, she later turned her attention from the wider society to the inner world of individuals, and has been fascinated to find in the myths and stories of different cultures so many parallels with psychological patterns in contemporary lives. This fascination has been translated into print many times over the years, including in her last three books. Major interests now are trying to understand more about what it is that makes psychotherapy a healing art, and exploring the complex psychological links between psychological processes in individuals and those in cultures and societies. These interests come together in her latest book: Why Don’t Psychotherapists Laugh? Enjoyment and the Consulting Room.
Education
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Cambridge University (MA), IGAP
Areas of Research / Professional Expertise
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Jungian psychology
Restorative process
Teaching
Writing
Personal Interests
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Friendships
Gardening
Contemporary novels
Theatre and film
Books
Articles
Unlocking the Titans: unravelling a psychological Olympianism?
Published: Mar 10, 2016 by International Journal of Jungian Studies
Authors: Ann Shearer
The Titans, the original pre-Olympian deities, have attracted little attention from Jungians and the received view of them is overwhelmingly negative. This paper traces the roots of this antipathy to the mythic war between Titans and Olympians. It follows the afterlife of the myth and shows how it is implicated in the elaborated oppositions of body and spirit, mind and matter, which have informed Western philosophy and are embedded in analytical psychology itself.
Adjusting the scales: restorative justice and the balance of power
Published: Mar 10, 2016 by International Journal of Jungian Studies
Authors: Ann Shearer
The figure of Justice is instantly recognisable by her sword and scales. This article takes the complexity of this image as the starting point for an exploration of different approaches to the administration of justice and their consequences. It contrasts the often divisive Western adversarial tradition with increasingly influential restorative approaches that seek the re-establishment of individual and social harmony.
Psyche's Babel: archetypal patterns in psychological organisations
Published: Mar 10, 2016 by International Journal of Jungian Studies
Authors: Ann Shearer
The bitterness of strife within and between depth psychology organisations has often been deplored. By contrast, this paper suggests that a pattern of ‘coming together and splitting apart’ is archetypal, unavoidable and essential to the search for a creative authority. It explores this enduring pattern through different creation and other myths and the ‘father-son field’ between Freud and Jung, and shows how these remain relevant to contemporary organisational struggles.