find Deeper Insights with Jungian Action Research
Do your own Jungian Action Research. Explore unconscious patterns, enhance self-awareness, and achieve personal transformation using this qualitative research approach to help guide you toward meaningful growth.
The Origins of Jungian Action Research
Jungian Action Research was developed by Dr Toula Gordillo through years of academic study and applied research with a Jungian lens. In 2010, she began a PhD in Psychology to explore how technology could help young people build resilience.
Her research revealed that youth connect deeply with stories and images—especially mythic fantasy and sci-fi books, films, and games—as a way to cope with mental health challenges. This led her to pursue a Doctor of Creative Arts to explore storytelling as a therapeutic tool.
From this work came Shadows of Sylvaheim, her young adult mythic fantasy novel rooted in Jungian psychology, Stoic and Taoist philosophy. She later tested its impact on adults, receiving strong positive feedback as a mental health intervention according to clients’ self-report.
Why Choose Jungian Action Research?
Consider why you should use SIT® tools to help you break free from limitations and tap into your potential during 1st, 2nd or 3rd person Jungian action research.
Integrate the Shadow
Helps bring unconscious aspects of the self into awareness, fostering wholeness.
Support Individuation
Supports personal growth and the process of becoming one’s true self... individuation.
Symbolic Meaning
Uses archetypes and myths to uncover deeper meanings and transformation.
How Jungian Action Research Became a Recognized Method
After the success of Shadows of Sylvaheim, Dr Toula found that while young readers enjoyed the novel, many adults used it to confront unresolved emotional issues from their adolescence. She also found personal healing by using the novel to address her own adolescent wounds as part of her own 1st person Jungian action research.
Themes like parent-child conflict, substance abuse, and poverty triggered Jungian emotional complexes in readers. This inspired Dr Toula to publish Healing the Healer: Writing Academic Papers as Jungian Action Research, which gained widespread recognition, reaching nearly 10,000 views and placing her in the top 3% of researchers on Academia.
Since then, Jungian Action Research has been applied internationally across psychology, education, and social sciences, highlighting the healing power of symbolic stories and images within a Jungian framework.
Dr Toula wrote about her own healing journey (as the primary case study of SIT Shadow Work “in action”) and using a combination of Jungian psychology interventions and Stoic and Taoist philosophy. Her Jungian action research method was documented outlined in her second book, entitled The Rise of Jung in Me.
Jungian Action Research Guide to Self-Discovery & Healing
How does storytelling contribute to healing?
What is Jungian Action Research?
Who Can Benefit from Jungian Analysis?
Is Jungian Action Research evidence-based?
Get Your Copy of Shadows of Sylvaheim
Discover how Jungian Action Research can help you explore your unconscious mind, process emotions, and achieve personal transformation. Get your copy of Shadows of Sylvaheim to do your own adolescent shadow work.
