Cheryle Van Scoy

Cheryle Van Scoy is an internationally certified Jungian psychoanalyst based in Ojai, California, and a graduate of the C.G. Jung Institute in Zürich. Her professional trajectory is distinctive: she began her career as a registered nurse with a Master of Nursing from UCLA, specializing in critical care and oncology, where she gained extensive experience accompanying individuals and families through life-threatening illness. This immersion in the psychoid dimensions of embodiment — the intersection of soma and psyche at the threshold of mortality — laid the groundwork for her subsequent turn toward depth psychology.

Van Scoy later earned a Master of Arts in Mythological Studies with an emphasis in Depth Psychology from Pacifica Graduate Institute, deepening her scholarly engagement with archetypal and imaginal traditions. Her analytic training at the Jung Institute in Zürich certified her as an IAAP member, and she is also a member of Sandplay Therapists of America.

Her clinical focus centers on verbal and nonverbal methodologies that encourage the healing, generative imagination: active engagement with dreams, Kalffian Sandplay, painting, drawing, writing, and working with clay. She brings particular expertise in the psychoid realm — the critical role of the body in Sandplay, dream work, and creative expressions associated with active imagination. Her specializations in critical illness, death and dying, and trauma reflect her nursing background integrated with Jungian analytic depth.