University of Essex C. G. Jung Lecture 2025

This talk explores the interplay between academic and therapeutic environments through the lens of Jungian and Nietzschean philosophy. It explores the challenges of navigating ego inflation, self-awareness, and institutional pressures, particularly within the humanities and social sciences.

Through personal experiences of ego inflation across various stages of academic and clinical life—from students to senior scholars—it highlights the challenges and contradictions inherent in teaching and studying self-awareness while navigating the pressures of academic performance and institutional demands.

Drawing from Nietzsche’s critique of modernity and Jung’s focus on shadow integration, the talk underscores the dangers of ego inflation and the necessity of self-reflection and engagement with the ‘external,’ material world. It critiques the isolating tendencies of academic and therapeutic contexts, and advocates for the holistic integration of material surroundings into self-reflective practices, calling for environments—both physical and institutional—that foster introspection, creativity and connection.

The themes extend to the design of therapeutic and urban spaces to highlight how well-designed spaces, and thoughtful architectural choices can facilitate psychological and intellectual growth, by fostering personal connection, self-discovery, and resilience amidst the pressures of modern institutional life.

Lucy Huskinson is Professor of Philosophy at Bangor University, UK, with nearly 30 years of experience in Jungian studies and practice, encompassing roles as a student, analysand, psychodynamic counsellor of adults and children, lecturer, researcher, author, editor, and examiner of students, Jungian degree programmes, and grant applications.

Her introduction to Freud’s Interpretation of Dreams during her undergraduate studies in philosophy at the University of Essex ignited a desire to explore his ideas further. This led her to a MA in Psychoanalytic Studies, where she encountered Jung. She remained at Essex for a PhD on Jung and Nietzsche, across the then-Departments of Philosophy and Psychoanalytic Studies. At the time, she trained as a psychodynamic counsellor with the WPF, aspiring to become a Jungian analyst. As part of this training, she spent several years as an analysand with a Jungian training analyst in London and worked a school counsellor in Brighton.

Academia intervened when she landed a job as a lecturer at Bangor University, where she has taught Jung, Freud, amongst other things, to undergraduate and PhD students for 18 years. She was a founding member of the International Association for Jungian Studies and has served as co-Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal for Jungian Studies. She has examined numerous PhD theses in psychoanalytic and Jungian studies from around the world, has been external examiner for Jungian programmes in the UK and US, and has assessed the odd grant application on psychoanalysis in her role as member of the AHRC Peer Review College.

Lucy’s research continues to focus on Jung, psychoanalysis, and their connections to aesthetics and the built environment. She is author of Nietzche and Jung (2004), but her more recent publications include Architecture and the Mimetic Self: a psychoanalytic study of buildings make and break our lives (2018), and Nietzsche and Architecture: a grand style for modern living (2024).

Entry is free and open to all but please register your place.

Host or Publisher Department of Psychosocial and Psychoanalytic Studies