Larisa Kharlanova

I think that over years of practice I have encountered nearly every possible request and situation that human life can present. Early on, I oriented myself only toward long-term work, since my training in analytical psychology was directed precisely at that — sustained, deep work, which is what allows for real, lasting change.

Now I work happily in short-term formats as well, especially with couples. In fact, my observations show that couples, as a rule, don't need long-term therapy at all.

I'm sorry that I can't yet work in more languages — part of my training took place in Spanish, but for now I only work in Russian and English.

Just as I did when I started out, I remain struck by the possibilities of our psyche, and I believe that in therapy we live through only a fragment of our individuation journey — the way each fairy tale captures a piece of some broader human experience, but never the whole path.

Practice, together with the particular way my mind works, has taught me to generalize and to spot repetitions, patterns, and mechanisms. But as I prepare for each session — even with someone I've worked with for a long time — I set myself to "not know." I've seen that this is the only way to hear something new, the only way to hear the voice of the unconscious and help a person find their own way out of a neurosis, a crisis, a deadlock, or a depression.

At one point, working with my own therapist was a required part of my training, and through that experience I discovered firsthand how important it was that she spoke to me as though I were a naive patient — even when I used terms we supposedly both understood, she would always ask me to say the same thing in different words. That, along with many years spent in universities, taught me to talk about complex things in simple words.

There were times during my own analysis when it was hard to accept certain things about myself, but curiosity always won out; I would think, "this is an unpleasant fact, but I haven't seen it, haven't been aware of it, haven't understood it until now — how will my life change if I take into account what I'm learning about myself right now?" That's why, for me, failure in therapy is a situation where the client's motivation and my interventions together aren't enough to spark that kind of curiosity.

In couples work, the object of change is not the individual but the dynamic of the relationship itself, and what works beautifully in individual therapy can turn out to be completely ineffective for a couple.

In a couple, change in the dynamic may fail to occur because the partners are not equally ready for it, among a number of other important reasons.

2006- 2014 Clinical psychologist and counselor 2011-2013 Training Candidate CG Jung Institute Zürich 2013-2016 Diploma candidate in CG Jung Institute Zürich
2016 - now a Certified Jungian Analyst, IAAP member, CG Jung Institute Zürich (Küsnacht, Switzerland) - accredited analyst; member CG Jung Institute of Dallas (USA)

2020 - now Supervision Training CG Jung Institute Zurich 2023 - now Approved therapist for the DPPClinPrac course at the University of Exeter

2001- 2006 Clinical Psychologist, Moscow State University 2006-2009 PhD study in Clinical Psychology Moscow State University 2011-2016 CG Jung Institute Zürich Switzerland- Jungian analyst