Work
Work
My areas of work are psyche, culture and history. I have researched in archives of India, the Carl Jung Archives at Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, (ETH) Zurich, C.G. Jung Biographical Archive at the Centre for the History of Medicine, Harvard, USA, and Joseph Campbell Archives at Pacifica Graduate Institute, Santa Barbara, USA. I have lectured in Jung institutes worldwide.
Conference & Seminar Presentations
2014. Paramapada Sopanam, International Association of Jungian Studies (IAJS) annual conference at Phoenix, Arizona, USA.
2018. Earth, Ecology and The Feminine, ‘Feminist Views From Somewhere’, Jungian conference, London, UK.
2018. Jung and Cultural Other, Tri-Annual IAJS-IAAP conference at Goethe University, Frankfurt, Germany.
2019. Katabasis in an Indian Myth, Classics conference, London, UK
2021. Animus, International Association of Jungian Studies (IAJS), online seminar.
2021. The Argumentative Jungian, ‘From Agon to Agonistics’, online Classics conference, London, UK.
2023. ‘The Presence of a Past: Reading the Ramayana’, Department of Psychosocial and Psychoanalytic Studies, University of Essex, UK.
Talks & Lectures
2013 – ‘Jung in India’, Goethe Institute, Calcutta, India
2013 – ‘Jung in India’, Swissnex, Bangalore, India
2014 – ‘Jung in India’, Bangalore India International Centre, India
2014 – ‘Jung’s Journey in India’, Pacifica Graduate Institute, Santa Barbara, USA
2014 – ‘Jung in India: Threads of Psychological Inquiry in Historical Research’, C.G. Jung Institute, New England (Boston), Massachusetts, USA.
2014 – ‘Jung’s Journey in India: Paths of Historical and Psychological Inquiry’, International School of Analytical Psychology, ISAP, Zurich.
2014 – ‘The Inner Journey – Jung in India’, International School of Analytical psychology, ISAP, Zurich.
2020 – ‘Decolonizing Jung: Key Approaches to Analytical Psychology in India’, The Freedom Institute, Brazil.
2021 – ‘The Lotus Gaze – Love and Longing in The Ramayana’, Centre of Applied Jungian Studies, South Africa.
2023 – Animus, Psyche & Culture, 100th meeting of Thiasos, Brazil.
2023 – ‘Animus, Psyche and Culture: A Jungian Revision’, Swissnex, Bangalore, India
Publications
Papers & book chapters
Sengupta, S. (2013). Samudra Manthan: Reflections on an Ancient Indian Myth in Jung and India, Spring Journal, Fall edition, New Orleans, USA.
Sengupta, S. (2017). Paramapada Sopanam: The Divine Game of Rebirth & Renewal in Jungian Perspectives on Rebirth & Renewal, Routledge, UK.
Sengupta, S. (2020). Cultural Other in Jung’s India in International Journal of Jungian Studies (IJJS), Volume 12, Issue 1: Special Issue: Indeterminate States: Transcultural, Transracial, Transgender, Brill, Netherlands.
Sengupta, S. (2020). Earth, Ecology and the Feminine in ‘Exploring Depth Psychology and the Female Self’, Leslie Gardner & Catriona Miller (edited), Routledge, UK.
Sengupta, S. (2022). Katabasis in an Ancient Indian Myth in ‘The Descent of the Soul and the Archaic: Katabasis and Depth Psychology’, Paul Bishop, Terence Dawson & Leslie Gardner (edited), Routledge, UK.
Sengupta, S. (2022). Rethinking Ecology: Myth, Meter and Measure in Jungle Nama in Journal of Analytical Psychology, (JAP), Vol 57, Issue: 5, John Wiley & Sons, UK.
Sengupta, S. (2023). Carl Gustav Jung and India: More than a Hundred Years Later in Cahiers jungiens de psychanalyse, Jung dans le monde, 2024/1 (N° 159).
Sengupta, S. (2025). Cultural crossings, Critical Dialogues and the Emergence of Hybridity in Journal of Analytical Psychology (JAP), Vol 70, Issue 5.
Books
Sengupta, S (2025). Jung in India, Peter Lang, Lausanne, Switzerland.
About Jung in India
Jung in India (originally published in 2013) is the first publication to trace the history of Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung’s history with India in depth. Based on original archival research, this book traces Jung’s unknown links with India, his journey to India in 1937-38, the places he visited, the events he participated in and the people he met as he toured the subcontinent. It locates the early history of analytical psychology and Indian thought against the backdrop of colonialism. As the only western psychoanalyst who engaged with Indian knowledge in depth, Carl Jung’s links with India signify an important cross-cultural interface between west and east.
The revised edition offers a concise and focused view of Jung’s relationship with India. With emerging hubs of inquiry around psyche and culture, this book brings Jung’s pioneering and little-known interface with India to the fore, presenting original archival research in refreshing new format and writing. The new critical introduction integrates contemporary theories in analytical psychology with Jung’s experiences, retaining the essence of the original work while offering new perspectives.
Sengupta has pieced together through meticulous research and appropriate speculation, a fascinating exploration of Jung’s multi-layered exploration of India. At the core of her compelling narrative are ongoing revelations about Jung’s meetings with India’s people, places, culture, history and mythology and how the Indian psyche influenced him long after his journey. We are confronted with the paradox of Jung as a deeply introverted man encountering the exotic wonders of a land that both attracted and repelled him. Jung is mostly celebrated for his explorations of the inner world, but as this extraordinary journey of a book so richly demonstrates, Jung was keenly curious and knowledgeable about the outer world and its wonderful variations.
Thomas Singer, M.D., editor of Psyche and the City: A Soul’s Guide to the Modern Metropolis and The Vision Thing: Myth, Politics, and Psyche in the World
Jung in India – Revised Edition, 2024
Sengupta, S. (2023). Animus, Psyche and Culture – A Jungian Revision, Routledge, UK.
About Animus, Psyche and Culture: A Jungian Revision
Animus, Psyche and Culture: A Jungian Revision looks at the phenomenology of the psyche in relation to culture. It links women and men’s experiences in a social world with trauma, healing and revival. The lived experiences of women and men in any culture play a critical role in shaping the psyche. This book uses biographical narratives, films, myths, history, poetry and fiction to describe women’s gendered experience in society and their impact on the unconscious psyche. It links the concept of the animus to realities of class, ethnicity, gender, war, colonialism relating women’s narratives with feminist thinking worldwide. Does Jung’s concept of the archetypal animus hold good universally or do they need to be revised keeping in mind cultural factors and the passage of time? This book shows that the psyche is influenced by cultural realities. It reiterates that the animus fosters transformation not only in the personal but also in the collective, encountering disintegration and despair as much in wider social life as in the individual. Animus, Psyche and Culture – A Jungian Revision is the first book from India that examines Jung’s ideas in cross-cultural realms. It locates the meaning of animus in lived experience of the social world, especially since it involves differences of gender and culture.
Simply in a league of its own! Building on her ground-breaking Jung in India, Sengupta makes a stellar contribution to the cultural revision – and hence renaissance – of Jungian theory and practice. It is one of the most important de-colonisations in the entire field of depth psychology and psychoanalysis. After this work, we cannot look at contra-sexuality, and especially at the animus, in an unchanged way.
Professor Andrew Samuels, author of The Political Psyche