An Interview with Martin Schmidt, conducted by Peggy Vermeesch ¹

Abstract

Martin Schmidt is a Jungian Training Analyst at the Society of Analytical Psychology in London, working full‐time in private practice. He started his career as a psychologist in psychiatric rehabilitation and has been actively involved for many years in training the first Jungian analysts in Russia, Ukraine and now China. From 2016 to 2019, he served as IAAP Honorary Secretary, and as Regional Organizer for Central Europe, responsible for organizing the training and examination of Jungian analysts in Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Serbia and Slovenia. He continues to serve as IAAP Liaison for Serbia.

His work spans the symbolic, aesthetic, and clinical. Drawing on Jungian and psychoanalytic thought, Schmidt reflects on the concept of the Self, his work with psychotic patients, cultural complexes in Russia and China, the role of beauty, art, and the sublime, temporality, the breaking of the analytic frame, and eroticized trauma. The interview delves into the paradoxes of analytic work and the risks and sacrifices inherent in the process of individuation.