Update: Ruth Ammann passed away on Aug. 3, 2023. You can read her obituary on the IAAP’s website. May she rest in peace.
Ruth Ammann is a Jungian analyst and architect in private practice in Aarau, Switzerland. She is a graduate of the C.G. Jung Institute in Küsnacht where she is now a lecturer and training analyst. She studied with Dora Kalff, the pioneer of therapeutic sandplay, and she is a past president of the International Society for Sandplay Therapy.
Mrs. Ammann earned her diploma in architecture from the ETH Zürich, the leading Swiss institution of higher education in the technical and natural sciences. Their Department of Architecture is one of the most highly regarded faculties of architecture in the world. She has lectured internationally on the relationship between architecture and psychology – the interaction between the built outer world and the humane inner world.
Her books include Healing & Transformation in Sandplay: Creative Processes Become Visible, and The Enchantment of Gardens: A Psychological Approach.
Currently, Mrs. Ammann is the curator of The Picture Archive of the C.G. Jung Institute in Küsnacht comprising of 4,500 pieces of original works by Jung’s patients from the years 1917 to 1955, and around 6,000 pieces created by the patients of his student, Jolande Jacobi. Analysands were asked to paint and draw their inner images like Jung did. Series of images were created as part of the therapeutic process of active imagination.
In 2018, on the occasion of the 70th anniversary of the founding of the Jung Institute, the picture archive was presented to the public for the first time in the exhibition, In the Land of Imagination: The C.G. Jung Collection, on display at the Museum im Lagerhaus in St. Gallen, Switzerland.
And last year, a book about the picture archive, Tesori Dell’Inconscio [The Book of the Pictures], edited by Mrs. Ammann along with fellow Jungian analysts Verena Kast and Ingrid Riedel, was published in German.
In June of this year, Mrs. Ammann will present the Memorial Day lecture online, a collaborative event which takes place every year on the anniversary of Jung’s death. On this, the 59th year, she will present The Janus-Faced Archivist: Thinking About 4500 Colourful Pictures Sleeping in Grey Boxes.
This interview was recorded on Wednesday, April 29, 2020. It’s 01:03:57 long and 55 MB. You can listen to it right here in your browser or download it directly to your computer. It’s also available on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Google Play, TuneIn, Spotify, and iHeartRadio. This episode is now available on our YouTube channel.
You can also listen to this episode on your Amazon Echo device. Simply say, “Alexa, play Speaking of Jung on Apple Podcasts (or on TuneIn).” Just be sure to pronounce Jung with a hard J.
SHOW NOTES
Sandplay with Dora M. Kalff A film by Peter Ammann, Ph.D., Jungian analyst
Speaking of Jung: Ep. 57 with Peter Ammann, Ph.D., Jungian analyst
Marie-Louise von Franz Amazon Author Page
International Society for Sandplay Therapy The history of sandplay
The Enchantment of Gardens: A Psychological Approach by Ruth Ammann
The Practice of Psychotherapy Vol. 16 of the Collected Works of C.G. Jung
The Red Book: Liber Novus by C.G. Jung
Tesori Dell’Inconscio Available from Amazon Italy
The Picture Book: Vienna Congress 2019 Treasures from the Archives of the C.G. Jung Institute in Zürich; this page includes the paper, “But why do I encourage patients to express themselves by means of brush, pencil, or pen at all?” (C.G. Jung) by Ruth Ammann {full .pdf}
Film about the exhibition “The C.G. Jung Collection” Eight-minute video on YouTube
Healing & Transformation in Sandplay: Creative Processes Become Visible by Ruth Ammann
Books in German Ruth’s books in German
The Picture Archive of the C.G. Jung Institute Zurich in Küsnacht Showing pictures and slides on request by appointment (link fixed Jul. 27, 2020)
Exploring the Picture Archive and Learning to work with Paintings in Analysis with Ruth Ammann, Verena Kast, and Marianne Meister, Jun. 8-12, 2020 at the C.G. Jung Institute in Küsnacht
Photo of Mrs. Ammann courtesy of the Hong Kong Sand Play Therapy Association