Analyst and Writer

My interest in Jung dates back to 1995 when, in mid-life, at a time of personal crisis, I looked for a therapist and found myself with a Jungian Analyst. Like Jung, I believe that crises are a calling for psychological development.

Since then, I have completed three professional trainings, qualifying firstly as a psychodynamic and then a psychoanalytic psychotherapist and finally as a Jungian analyst – but the integrity of my  practice resides first and foremost in my own long and intensive personal analysis.

I also hold a Diploma in Psychoanalytic Supervision and am a member of the British Association for Psychoanalytic and Psychodynamic Supervision.

I have nearly thirty years’ clinical experience as a therapist. This included a period in an honorary capacity in NHS Secondary care in Brighton in the Psychotherapy Department, offering psychoanalytic psychotherapy to patients referred through the mental health services, and later in a Psychiatric Placement with the ‘Assertive Outreach Team’ in Brighton, supervised by the senior Consultant Psychiatrist/senior Jungian analyst.

I now work solely in private practice working with individuals ‘in person’ in my consulting room in Horsham. I live and work in a quiet location on the edge of St. Leonard’s Forest.

My clinical work in recent years with ex-boarders has led to a particular interest in the long term emotional and psychological impact of sending children away from home at an early age into the care of an institution in the belief that it will be the ‘making of them’. I am interested in the widespread implications of this practice individually, intergenerationally and culturally. I work with ex-boarders, partners of ex-boarders and those whose parents or grandparents were boarders.

I have completed the specialist post graduate diploma training for therapists with Nick Duffell and Boarding School Survivors and I have been invited to join the supervisors’ team for the next cohort.

I now offer supervision with a Jungian/analytic perspective for therapists working with ex-boarders in their practice. I welcome enquiries from therapists with a psychodynamic or psychoanalytic background to discuss individual needs.

During my time in analysis, and relatively late in life, I discovered that I enjoyed writing.  This is where I have ‘found my voice’. Three of my papers have now been published.

I have recently contributed a chapter to a new book ‘The Un-Making of Them: Clinical Reflections on Boarding School Syndrome’, edited by Nick Duffell and published by Routledge in April 2025.

The title of my chapter is ‘English Landscape: an archetypal perspective on the ex-boarder‘.

The editor introduces my chapter as:

‘…a fascinatingly detailed case study of Jungian psychoanalysis with one ex-boarder patient……. Not an ex-boarder herself, McLaren allows her patient to get under her skin; over time, she creatively allows the deep-seated issues to emerge and reveal themselves. The therapy appears haunted by the shadowy presence of a fox. This wily, secretive survivor is featured in many English myths and legends, rooted in landscape; here he becomes a totem animal for the ex-boarder ‘strategic survival personality’. After much hunting for her patient’s fox, McLaren finds her way, inspired by Donald Kalsched: ‘In trauma work … we must learn to speak a soulful language, because it is uniquely the human soul that is threatened with annihilation by early trauma in a child’s life.’

I have been invited by West Midlands Institute of Psychotherapy to present my chapter at an online event on Monday 1st December. Full details and booking information can be found on their website at https://wmip.org/events-and-resources/.

My first paper, ‘Birds, Beasts and Babies – Notes from an Infant Observation‘, won the Roszika Parker prize in 2013 and was published in the British Journal of Psychotherapy in 2014. This prize focuses on a critical engagement with questions of creativity.

My second paper, ‘The Winnowing Way – Infant Observation with Soul in Mind‘, was published in  Harvest, the Journal of the C. G. Jung Club, London, in 2021. 

Please visit my website at sallymclarentherapy.co.uk for further information about me, my practice and my writing. If you would like to read any of my papers please do email me to request a copy.