Wounded Healer PDF
Wounded Healer PDF
Wounded Healer PDF
what the form is, the ground or the "spaces between the forms" can
also be experienced. One of the ideas I would like to discuss here is how
the conscious experience of space can contribute to our understanding
of woundedness and perhaps help the client more easily move through
difficult times. Specifically, this paper addresses five different areas
involved in the process of working with a client: (1) a description of
the experience of woundedness as it manifests in psychotherapy; (2) a
discussion of how the experience of emptiness, formlessness, and space
are important aspects of woundedness; (3) the suggestion that the
emergence of a more authentic self - the CORE - depends on how this
experience of space is approached;
(4) a discussion of the
countertransference challenges involved in this formula for change; and
(5) a look at how the client responds to woundedness in the therapist.
These five areas comprise the basic features of an interaction in which a
therapist is attempting to guide a client through a healing or a
transformational process.
THE WOUNDED HEALER
There are two major myths about the process of psychotherapy that
are being continuously challenged by students of this field that still
somehow reassert themselves in the psyche of both therapists and
clients. One is the notion that the therapist has nothing basically wrong
with him or her and that he or she is the well one in the relationship. In
this framework, the client is the ill person or the one whose wounds
need tending and the wounds of the therapist are minimal or need not
be addressed in the interaction. The other myth holds that the client
has nothing to do with the healing process of the therapist - that the
healing energy or remedial interactions go only one way and that the
person who has taken the role of the bearer of the illness has nothing to
give to his or her healer. Both of these myths assert themselves in
complex patterns of behavior and belief that both therapists and clients
act out in a variety of ways like styles of
doing therapy,
rules about boundaries,
and instances of
misunderstanding and even exploitation on both sides. In their extreme
positions, these belief systems overlook two important phenomena in
2
the process of healing and being healed that strongly affect the
relationship between therapist and client....the strengths that come
from facing and acknowledging woundedness in the therapist and the
impulse to heal others that is a genuine part of the healing process of
the client.
From the perspective of countertransference, these issues relate to
the ability of the therapist to stay with and create a healing
environment for clients that have deep levels of wounding and help
them work through to a healing. What is important here is that the
therapist have some idea of what being wounded feels like from the
inside and has experiential knowledge of what the steps toward healing
might be. Another issue would be how the therapist reacts to clients
that wish or need to address the therapist's wounds at times in the
course of therapy. I think that these issues relate to rather generic
levels of countertransference in that they are not necessarily related to
specific character patterns of the therapist, but fall into the catagory of
how does one human being with a certain pattern of incompleteness
relate to and work with another individual with a different pattern of
incompleteness.
The image of the healer having wounds or being wounded is an
archetypal form that exists in mythology and in practice back to earliest
recorded stories and literature (Halifax, 1982). In Shamanism, one of
the earliest forms of healing interactions, the journey and call of the
shaman specifically includes a period of sickness and withdrawal in which
the individual is out of commission for some months or years, sheds his
former identity and is introduced to experiences and knowledge from
other parts of the self that give him or her a renewed sense or purpose
and direction among the tribe or social group.
In many of these
societies, one does not become a shaman without this fundamental
sickness and withdrawal experience. This aspect of the transformation
to become a shaman is quite separate from the training given him or her
by other teachers and from the "call" itself. The call might come in a
dream, or in some encounter with spirits or ancestors or some subtle
aspect of the self that is not usually part of ordinary consciousness. It
sets the shaman separate from the physicians,
person, have to work with and live in a body whose capacity to heal was
greatly diminished. The physical illness that often accompanies posttraumatic shock would be an example of this as well. If you have
experienced this in your own structure and life you know how slow the
healing process is and how important the issue of "keeping the wound
clean" is for knitting the body together. Keeping the emotions open
and running is important here, but respecting the timing of the body and
its ability to heal is the most important factor. For this kind of wound,
the experience of accepting and working with a limited body becomes
the challenge of the client.
But, feeling emotional pain or recognizing the limits of the body are
not the only wounds that have to be addressed. Once the emotional
and memory base of early experiences have been touched we are still
left with the next phase of the healing work - how to feel and assist in
restoring what was lost in those early experiences that will help the
client not repeat the cycles of deprivation, abuse or self-destructive
behavior in their current life. That is to say, the next level of wounding
below the emotional pain is the experience of incompleteness of self
that emerges into consciousness.
I'd like to venture the idea that this sense of incompleteness as an
experience of the body and the self-identity is actually the true wound
referred to when we talk about the transformational possibilities in
facing our woundedness. This is the level of woundedness that really
yields the most returns, and the ability to experience and work with the
various dimensions of incompleteness in ourselves will give us what we
ultimately seek in terms of feelings of wholeness and psychophysical
integration.
If we look at how the individual might experience his or her
incompleteness, we see several possibilities. As I mentioned earlier, one
manifestation would be the inability to do something- to be unable to
make a necessary response to a situation to solve the problem at hand.
I stress here the inablility, not the unwillingness. People truly are unable
to make certain responses. The victim sometimes cannot come into
cause without learning all the small steps that others have mastered.
The individual with a broken heart cannot love. Some people cannot
fight back, others cannot receive, forgive, love themselves, surrender.
6
All of us have these missing pieces, not because we want them, but
because we have not yet worked through the steps to their
development. It is certainly true that some are larger and deeper than
others and many are unconscious. It is also true that they have an
impact on others in relationship to us.
A second characteristic of the experience of incompleteness is the
deep expression of grief that occurs when we become aware that parts
of ourself have been missing from consciousness and have not been
available for us to use in our lives up to now. The deepest loss we can
experience is the loss of our authentic self to our defensive structures.
It can preceed or accompany all other losses early in childhood and set
up later problems of loneliness, isolation or deprivation.
A third aspect of this experience is that with or below the inability to
respond or the feeling of grief is a sense of emptiness or void. Some
part of us seems to be missing. For some clients, the usual fixed sense
of their self-image is not present, yielding instead to a sense of
dissolution and dread or a marked formlessness. The result can be an
experience of emptiness, loneliness, inferiority, weakness, depletion. For
others, the sense of dread is not so strong, but instead they feel a
sense of space....an experience of having no fixed identity or form that
is familiar. It can be positive or negative, and they can experience this
for a minute, an hour or months. Usually, these are difficult personal
experiences, and the question we are addressing here is what is the
value of touching these places in ourselves?
Is that experience
something you pursue or is it limited to those individuals who fall into it
by virtue of an incomplete personality integration? Is there something
beyond the sense of emptiness that makes it worth exploring? The
answer of course is yes, and relates directly to that phenomena called
the CORE in bioenergetic analysis.
Now if we go back and look at the anatomy of these incomplete
spaces, several things are apparent. First they are both in the body and
the mind, that is they involve thinking patterns and belief systems as
well as the areas of the body involved...the heart, the belly centers, the
genitals, the legs. They are often experienced by the individual as areas
in which there is no energy or the energy present is stagnant. That is,
the initial physical contact with those spaces is one of deadness,
7
10
do not form with people and their former sense of being able to do
things is sharply curtailed. They may swim around in certain feelings like
despair and loneliness with no sense of how to resolve the crisis. This
formless period has to be endured and experienced and it seems that
the more focused and goal directed you were before the period, the
more difficulty you will have with this formlessness. This is a time when
space is in your life and psyche and the more crystallized you were
around your identity or behaviors, the more uneasy the formless times
are at first. In this experience of space the individual is sometimes
conscious of having no psychic structure to mediate the flows of
energy. The process of formation that is taking place in these periods is
slow and deep. Vision, choices made and inner dialog are important
parts of the reformation task. For the therapist, the support of the
formlessness and the ability to help the client name the experience and
work with it is most important. If you push to fast and violate timing,
one of the most direct results is a familar phenomena in bioenergetic
work....half the energy contacted and released goes into building healthy
structures and choices and half once again goes into reinforcing the
character patterns.
It is the ability of the therapist to not take responsiblity for the
clients progress during these periods that will yield the most healing. To
resist acting out "the omnipotent healer" syndrome here is most
necessary. Support for the clients process and a knowledge of the level
at which structure is being reformed are the best tools we have to guide
an individual through these periods. The paradox here is that when the
absence of identity is faced through embracing the experience of void or
space, some new experience of identity emerges. Identity itself is
remarkably fluid. If they walk through it however, the potential benefits
are enormous. A new sense of direction, a different sense of selfidentity and another level of consciousness about life can be the reward.
How to walk through it is always the question, since it is a time when
many questions are asked, but few are answered. If you can be still with
the experience of space itself, again you have an advantage over those
who rush in to fill it too soon.
We began this discussion of woundedness in the therapist by tracing
it down to a sense of incompleteness about the self and then to the
12
void and emptiness. This aspect of the process being more frightening
and less tolerable, but still a necessary transitional experience that, if
supported and understood by the therapist can yield rich results. At
this point I would like to discuss those supposed "results".
CONTACTING THE CORE
All along, there has been the implication that something emerges
out of this process. That is, it seems the primary characteristic of
space is that it allows. Actually, it is the experience of ALLOWING.
From the ground of nothing, everything is possible. The many things it
allows and the many forms that emerge make it universal and individual
at the same time. In the metaphorical sense, space itself heals.
Anywhere its presence is found, movement is occurring and change is
happening. From the perspective of the heart, it is the process of
ACCEPTANCE.
As space is tolerated, acceptance grows and the
emergence of different energies and states in the individual can occur.
It is the nature of these energies that is the next area of discussion.
There has been in bioenergetic theory some discussion of the
different layers of expression that accompany the working through of
these periods of wounding into more consciousness. In Reich's work, he
talked about three basic levels in the human character, referring to
these as the mask or superficial defensive layer, a second layer of
emotional flows both positive and negative that constitute the shadow
parts of the self, and a third CORE layer made up of the deepest aspects
of the self. John Pierakkos has called this layer the CORE (Center of
Right Energies). There has always been reference to the idea that this
CORE pattern lies beneath the characterological positions and is
something more than even the deep emotional flows that run through
the open, unobstructed body. In his monograph, Pierakkos places the
location of these energies in the heart centers (Pierakkos,1974).
John's concept of the CORE seems to refer to a group of responses and
energies that constitute a kind of authentic emotional self in which the
individual lives from and in the heart center. Freedom from fear,
compassion, and a sense of unity with other living beings constitute
some of the experiences of contacting this center. This level of living,
14
loving and knowing has been the most "spiritual" level discussed in the
traditional bioenergetic literature and is the highest level of integration
recognized in our work.
In other disciplines, ranging from
Psychosynthesis to Sufism or Theosophy there are similar notions that
there are "higher or deeper" levels of being that can be reached and
opened to as we let go of our character identifications and move
through the experience of space or formlessness. These concepts refer
to a wide range of energetic and transpersonal experiences. So I would
like to leave some space for whatever concept you hold in these areas
and refer to those levels, in general, as the CORE of man. What we are
discussing here is what emerges when wounding is experienced and
opened to and how we as therapists can support or sabotage it.
To begin with, I am in basic agreement with the proposition that an
important goal of a depth psychotherapy process is for each individual
to find what it means to experience their CORE. I also believe that this
experience is deeper than simply being an emotional person or having
feelings, but involves a more subtle dimension of experience that is best
described by the term "states of being". That is, I believe it ultimately
includes but goes beyond just the heart level of functioning. These
experiences are more subtle than the energy flows usually worked with
in bioenergetic analysis, such as aggression and the movements of grief
or tenderness, but will sometimes come through during such work with
the body. They are traditionally described as energies or "qualities" and
represent basic human values and traits...strength, value, love,
compassion, clarity, certainty, courage, will, joy, peacefulness. They are
those states that make up the foundation of all our behaviors and from
which we move outward. They certainly involve the operation of
different centers in the body...e.g. love and compassion from the heart,
clarity from the head centers, certain kinds of strength from the hara
and solar plexus, etc., although their ultimate source may not be from
these regions. They seem to be more enduring in their quality, being
more steady state energies as contrasted with the fluidity of the
emotions and moods. So they are much deeper than the emotional
flows and the quickly changing physical sensations of the body. The
words used to describe these states of being reflect this relative
permanance...words like CORE, PRESENCE, ESSENCE, BEING and SOUL.
15
these activities felt more like play than work and enhanced rather than
depleted our energies. People will say "I really feel like myself when I'm
doing such and such!". In the body, the absence of chronic muscular or
organ contractions and open emotional expression allows these states
to emerge. That is, the more you are in your heart, the more of these
states become possible.
The general principle is that any blocks in
emotional systems such as aggression or receptivity also block the
emergence of particular corresponding states of being. For example,
strength, will and certainty would not be present in individuals in which
there were strong blocks to the expression of anger.
Similarly,
understanding, clarity and awakeness would not emerge in individuals in
which blocks in the neck, eyes and face prevented the flow of energies
into and out of the head. Bioenergetic work with the body becomes a
path by which the energetic flow is opened and core states can emerge.
The concept of the CORE has not been easily assimilated into
psychological studies of the personality, primarily because in many
writings on the subject there is an antagonistic relationship between the
personality and the CORE. Somehow the personality or ego has been
regarded as an enemy of these other dimensions of the self. We have
gotten the impression that the ego is bad and the "true self" is good
and that only one can survive in this ultimate battle for domination. The
middle position seems more likely to me in that the following seems to
be true...that in order for certain states of being to emerge in the
individual, characterological positions have to be surrendered and
rendered less rigid and that the CORE does not emerge in the absence
of such surrender and acceptance of the feeling states and
woundedness under the defenses. In other words, the characterological
positions must yield to these energies, but not be pitted against them.
For more discussion of this subject I would refer you to Almaas' work
(1987 b), but for now I would offer these notions about the CORE: (1)
It is that essence or experience of self that we seek in our
woundedness..and that in the most positive sense, the doorway to a
deeper self is through the wound; (2) that it does exist contrary to and
beyond character as identity and it is experienced as our identity even
more deeply than the characterological positions were; (3) that it's
presence in our experience and consciousness can assist us in dissolving
17
characterological positions (it has a healing force); (4) that the deficient
emptiness and grief so acutely felt when we touch our incompleteness
results from the felt loss of this CORE and not just loss of the old
identifications and psychic structures that have dissolved; (5) that it is
an energy band..more subtle than physical vitality or the emotions and
can be identified by its qualities; and (6) that it emerges in individuals
through the process of problem solving and struggles with
consciousness. That if we seek life - the life of the body and the life of
the spirit, our reward will be the emergence of this experience called our
CORE.
What we have come to in this process of pursuing and experiencing
our woundedness is a look at the process of transformation....it begins
with conscious awareness and expression of the emotions and memories
around the early losses and traumas; it moves to a process of
disidentification with those parts of the psychic structure that
developed as substitutions for the absence of the states of Being
(surrendering the characterological position); it becomes the experience
of deficient emptiness and incompleteness; and if it can be fostered and
allowed to be the experience of space; it can result in the emergence
and awareness of states of BEING or the CORE.
Countertransference issues arise when for whatever reason we
cannot tolerate or recognize certain aspects of this process of
transformation in our clients. All throughout our work as a therapist,
the handling of certain feelings becomes a primary issue....how to
tolerate their levels of rage or grief or sexuality without shrinking or
interfering with the process in order to handle our own fear. Often
these intense client feelings are directed at us, either consciously or
unconsciously and our bodies react strongly. Being able to resonate
with those emotional levels or become non-resistant to the directed
expressions without disconnecting from our own heart or from the client
becomes an important learning in how to work with people. I have come
to believe that one of the most important features of maturity in a
therapist is the ability to face any level or kind of energy in a client and
not disconnect with my heart. Not that I have to agree or participate in
that energy, but that I not remove my connection from them as they
act in ways that are characterological for them.
18
and risking ones' life to save a friend. How often we need to call upon
such behaviors varies of course with how safe, secure and protected our
environment was, but for some individuals this mechanism was called
into play to help provide an environment that could meet basic needs of
survival for themselves. That is, some people as infants and young
children had to use their therapeutic strivings, not to help others from a
secure place, but to try to construct for themselves an environment in
which they could survive. They used these energies to try to construct
a matrix in which they could grow and develop and get loved and
nurtured....and most often they tried this by fixing or shoring up or
supporting their own parents. They had to actively intervene to help the
parents get rid of some neurotic trait or compensate for some basic
weakness or literally make the environment workable. Since survival
depended on it, these behaviors became a basic part of the bonding
experience and could not become separate from the later processes of
individuation and separation. For some clients then, to
complement the ego of the nurturing person by some active process of
helping is a natural outcome of their early experience. In these clients,
the therapeutic strivings have that curious mix of altruism and
selfishness that are not well differentiated. Their intense interest in our
wounds and incompleteness carries with it a spirit of resolution that
certainly does not match our willingness to work on the problem on their
timing. It is difficult not to disconnect from the client at these points in
order to protect our own timing and limits (e.g., "We are not here to
work on me!"). If the therapist denies his or her woundedness in these
situations, the wound of the therapist once again becomes inextricably
linked with the ego of the client and the client cannot progress any
further in this area. In addition, it is denying a major source of focused
energy in the client that can be utilized and redirected for their own
healing.
Now for healthier (i.e., better and more differentiated ego
structures) clients, there are other levels where these strivings take
hold. The need to have the therapist set better limits, be more
compassionate, let go of some neurotic trait, be a more adequate
identification model, or to show that the client really can have an effect
on him or her are some of the goals of these movements. For each
21
22
REFERENCES
Almaas, A.H. (1986a). The void. York Beach, ME: Samuel Weiser.
Almaas, A.H. (1986b). Essence. York Beach, ME: Samuel Weiser.
Campbell, J. (1972). Schizophrenia - The Inward Journey. Myths to
live by. New York, N.Y: Viking Press.
Halifax, J. (1982). Shaman: the wounded healer.
Crossroad
Publishing.
23
York,
N.Y: