From the Russian taiga to the C.G. Jung Institute in Zurich, Yury Li-Toroptsov has followed a path shaped by images, working as a coach and analyst-in-training with dreams, fairy tales, and visual symbols, while also practicing as a photographer. For him, images are fundamental expressions of the psyche, revealing what words cannot, connecting us to hidden parts of ourselves, and guiding inner exploration and transformation.
French version of this interview
Yury Li-Toroptsov, Tiger (Deleted Scene), 2015
J-P. Robert: While visiting Brittany this August 2025, how would you describe your life journey, which took you from Vladivostok to Paris, with extended stopovers in New York and Zurich?
Yury Li-Toroptsov: I come from a village of 300 people called Grodekovo, situated about 250 kilometers northeast of Vladivostok, deep in the Russian taiga. It’s an isolated place, surrounded by forest. From a very young age, I dreamed of travel and distant places. I think I’m one of those people who need to go far away to start understanding who they are. And I needed to understand. I was born to a Korean father and a Russian mother, and I lost my father very young.
That thirst for travel and learning first took me to Vladivostok, the region’s capital, a city of 600 000. After failing the first time, I eventually got into university. I was the first in my family to pursue higher education. After earning a degree in English, I received a scholarship to continue my studies in New York. I was 24.
I enrolled at the New School for Social Research to study nonprofit management. The contrast between Vladivostok and New York was striking. Everything moved faster, everything felt more intense. Those two years left a deep mark on me. I discovered freedom of thought, new desires, a kind of energy that gave me the confidence to make choices I would never have considered before.
Once I got my Masters in 2000, I landed a job that brought me to Paris. And Paris became my home. I built both my professional and personal life there, developed my projects, and broadened my interests.
My path has never been linear. I’ve always done things a bit differently, for example when I left my consulting position at the UN in Paris to become a full-time artist. It wasn’t a whim, it was a necessity.
Of course, being different comes at a cost. You don’t fit easily into categories. Sometimes people don’t quite know how to define you. And there are moments when you wonder if your life isn’t just a series of unrelated gigs. I’ve had those moments. What helped me were the people I met along the way, those who believed in me. Thanks to them, I gradually understood the thread that connected everything. It wasn’t random. There was meaning, even if I couldn’t see it back then.
Today, as a professional coach, I work with people who are also looking for meaning and direction. Often, they navigate several worlds. They’re creative, ambitious, a bit on the margins. Sometimes they feel disconnected from themselves or unsure of their place.
More recently, my journey led me to Zurich, where I’m currently training at the C.G. Jung Institute. It’s a deep and demanding inner process that nourishes and completes what I offer in my practice in Paris.
And today, I’m speaking to you from Brittany, which is perhaps the farthest place from Vladivostok on the map. I spend several months a year here. It’s a place where I feel deeply connected to nature and the elements, a setting that invites reflection, slowing down, and creativity.
You’re currently training at the C.G. Jung Institute in Zurich while continuing your professional work. What does this institute represent for you, and what drew you to it?
My interest in Jung goes back to 2003. At the time, I was going through a period of deep professional change. One day, by chance, I came across Memories, Dreams, Reflections in an English bookstore on Rue de Rivoli in Paris. I opened the book… and couldn’t put it down. I devoured it. From that moment, Jung remained in the back of my mind. I read his writings, and attended lectures. There was something uncannily familiar about him, even though I had never heard of him before.
Twenty years passed between that first reading in 2003 and my application to the Institute. A long path filled with reading, encounters, training, and also resistance. The final decision came to me in a dream. A striking dream, carrying a message. I chose to listen to it. I applied, and I was accepted.
Today, training in Zurich while continuing my work in Paris allows me to weave together the different strands of my journey. It’s demanding, but deeply coherent. The C.G. Jung Institute represents, for me, a space of rigor, inner inquiry, and symbolic exploration, where I can deepen a process that began long ago.
The Institute is a unique place. Both intellectual and deeply human. It’s not just about learning a theory, but living it, experiencing it. What led me there was a kind of inner calling: the need to inhabit my contradictions, to understand the images that move through me, and to meet other seekers on the same path.
Images seem to run through your entire life, both as a photographer and as an explorer of the psyche. What does working with images mean to you? And how do you approach it in your practice?
My journey of self-discovery has taken me to the far corners of the world. Along the way, without consciously looking for it, I discovered a rare and powerful tool for inner exploration: the image.
In his introduction to The Secret of the Golden Flower by Richard Wilhelm, Jung writes: “Image is psyche.” For him, images are not just visual representations of reality, but the very expressions of the psyche, the way the unconscious communicates and guides our inner development. Images are fundamental psychic phenomena.
That definition resonates deeply with me. Since childhood, vision, seeing, and the visual have played a central role in my development. In a way, I’ve always known how to connect to images. They’ve been with me throughout my life. They’ve often been resources where other support was lacking.
I’ve come to understand that images are a red thread running through my entire path. As a photographer, an art-based coach, and an analyst in training at the C.G. Jung Institute, these different facets of my work are united by a single language: that of images.
In my coaching practice, I work with images in various forms: photographs, spontaneous drawings, dreams, fairy tales, metaphors, etc. I work with both individual clients and corporate teams. Images often allow us to express what words struggle to say. They make visible what is blurred, buried, or repressed, but also what might point the way forward.
This work creates both distance and a new kind of closeness. Distance that allows for perspective, and closeness with parts of oneself long forgotten. It’s especially useful in times of transition, crisis, or reorientation.
Whether with individuals or in collective settings in companies, I see how powerfully and quickly images help us go deep and get to the heart of things. They open a space for imagination, dialogue, and transformation. Working with images means working with what is alive, shifting, and deeply human. The symbolic dimension of images is a key to creating meaning. And I think the crisis we face today is, above all, a crisis of meaning.
As a photographer and analyst-in-training, how do you experience the influx of AI-generated images? Do you feel concerned, intrigued, indifferent?
A year ago, a corporate client invited me to lead a workshop on image-making with artificial intelligence. I declined. The goal was mainly to entertain and make “fun” images as a team. But that kind of use doesn’t make much sense to me in the context of real image work. I’m not interested in it.
As a photographer and analyst-in-training, I’m deeply concerned by the development of these technologies. What’s fascinating is how easy it has become to create an image. In just seconds, without a camera, without a subject, without lighting. It’s staggering. But what worries me is that these images, no matter how impressive, often feel lifeless. They carry no trace of lived experience, of the body, of the unconscious. There’s a real risk of dehumanization.
I’m not opposed to generative tools as such. If they help deepen one’s relationship with oneself or explore personal imagery, then they might be of interest. But so far, I haven’t come across convincing examples. For now, most uses I’ve observed remain surface-level. They produce slick, spectacular images but without depth.
Things are evolving so fast that I believe new uses will emerge, perhaps more sensitive, more intimate. I remain attentive.
The photograph you chose for this interview is powerful and evocative. What does it tell us about you, or what you hope to communicate in this conversation?
The image you see at the beginning of this interview is of a tiger. It’s part of a series titled Deleted Scene, a photography project I first exhibited at the Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature in Paris, which also became a book published by Kehrer.
With Deleted Scene, I returned to Russia, to places tied to the scattered memory of my father. It was a way of walking in the traces of a fragmented legacy, of looking for images where almost nothing remained.
The tiger is an important animal for me, both real and symbolic. Tigers live in the forests around Grodekovo, the village where I grew up. But they also inhabit my psyche. For me, the tiger represents everything at once: the wounded and the healer, the hunter and the prey, aggression and vulnerability, courage and fear, destiny and will, the abandoned and the found, an ancestor and a contemporary.
Dreams and fairy tales hold a central place in your work, both one-on-one and in small groups. Is it really possible to work with dreams in a small group setting, and if so, what conditions make it fruitful?
For me, dreams (and fairy tales, for that matter) are first and foremost images. Jung believed that images arise spontaneously from the unconscious—in dreams, fantasies, art, myths, and other symbolic forms. They act as emissaries, carrying psychic energy and conveying messages specific to each person’s inner situation. Their function is to restore psychological balance and support transformation.
Today, I see small groups as the last remaining collective spaces where deep work is still possible. The dream and fairy-tale groups I lead throughout the year, now mostly online, are a profound source of joy for me. I love this work deeply.
Like any group work, it requires careful attention. Dreams are psychoactive substances. They touch, stir, and act on us. So you need to set boundaries, create trust, and establish conditions for respectful listening.
But when that container is in place, the experience can be extraordinarily rich. A dream shared and explored in a group becomes a multi-faceted mirror. It brings insight, not just to the dreamer, but to others as well. It awakens images, echoes, and resonances in everyone. And sometimes, it touches something larger: a core of shared humanity.
To conclude, how do today’s younger generations perceive Jungian psychology in a world undergoing rapid change and often marked by anxiety?
I see genuine curiosity. Many young people are searching for meaning beyond quick fixes or technical answers. What Jung offers—individuation, connection to inner figures, the depth of dreams—serves as a compass in a fragmented world. It’s not a fast method, but an invitation to truly meet oneself. And that, I believe, is profoundly subversive today.
Pay attention to your dreams, your images, and what moves you inside. Like Yury Li-Toroptsov, follow the path that feels genuinely yours, even if it is different from others.
Interview conducted by Jean-Pierre Robert
translation by Yury Li-Toroptsov
August 2025
Yury Li-Toroptsov
As a photographer and visual explorer, Yury Li-Toroptsov captures moments where everyday life meets the unexpected. His perspective, shaped by travels and encounters, reflects both inner and outer landscapes.
He is also a professional coach and a Jungian analyst in training at the C.G. Jung Institute in Zurich.
Discover his world: toroptsov.com