Category: Psychotherapy

Philip M. Bromberg on Therapy as a Negotiation of Otherness

Surfing at Wind & Sea, La Jolla, California, February 2008 by Bengt E Nyman. Licensed under CC BY 2.0.

Sooner or later, “the shadow of the tsunami” [of unhealed developmental trauma] will be evoked, bringing with it an enacted reliving of the original relational context that led to its existence, and for more individuals than one might imagine, evoking an affective memory of sliding into the abyss of depersonalization — the edge of annihilation.

For all such patients, any apparent failure of their dissociative mental structure to do its “proper” job makes their highest priority the restoration of stability, which in therapy means, “keep your hands off my ability to put things out of my mind.”

A patient chooses to see a therapist because of an implied promise that she may become more able to live her life with well-being, spontaneity, and creativity, but most patients for whom developmental trauma is a big issue have already settled for relative stability through believing that “the only safe hands to be in are my own, and you are not me,” which is why the heart of therapy is about negotiation of otherness.

The therapist’s goal of helping them restore their right to exist as a whole person has to earn its place in the analytic relationship and, paradoxically, it is earned because of the patient’s misgivings, not in spite of them.

from Bromberg, P. M. (2011). The Shadow of the Tsunami: And the Growth of the Relational Mind (1st ed.). Taylor & Francis.

“This Jungian Life” Podcast: The Wounded Healer

Chiron and Achilles. John Singer Sargent, circa 1922-1925. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston MA. Source: Wikimedia Commons in the public domain.

In Greek myth, Chiron symbolizes the wounded healer, a term [Carl Gustav] Jung originated. A wise and noble centaur, Chiron suffered a painful, incurable wound—and inspired many a Greek hero to reach full potential.

Psychotherapy and psychoanalysis attract wounded healers. A recent survey shows that 82% of applied psychology graduate students and faculty in the U.S. and Canada experience mental health conditions (Victor et. al., 2021). We must be willing, like Chiron, to embrace the darkness of our painful places if we hope to help others embrace theirs.

from Stewart, D., Marchiano, L., & Lee, J. (2021, August 12). Episode 176 – The Wounded Healer – This Jungian Life.

Victor, S. E.; Schleider, J. L.; Ammerman, B. A.; Bradford, D. E.; Devendorf, A.; Gunaydin, L. A.; Hallion, L. S.; Kaufman, E.; Lewis, S.; & Stage, D. ’rae. (2021). Leveraging the Strengths of Psychologists with Lived Experience of Mental Illness. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/ksnfd

Steven Reisner on the Narcissistic Response to Trauma

Narcissus, by Caravaggio (1594-96). Oil on canvas.

To continue to be heard, the traumatized must tell the story that the listeners—the journalists, the philanthropists, the aid organizations, the politicians, and, too often, the therapists—want to hear. When they do so, they are valued; their story is validated. The Tibetan monk, the Kosovar proponent of multiethnic harmony, the Afghan woman under the Taliban, the adult abused as a child, each tells a story of suffering which at different times has satisfied the [narcissistic] fantasy (not to mention the political agenda) of different listeners. It is the story that becomes the commodity; it is the story, not the suffering, that is validated in the telling.

Herein lies the envy that sets in among sufferers; true sufferers believe that it is suffering itself that opens privileged status, and they become confused when the listener moves on to another story of suffering, equal (or lesser) in severity compared to the first, but that holds more current meaning for the listener.

from Reisner, S. (2003). Trauma: the seductive hypothesis. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 51(2), 381–414.