Shamans And Analysts

Shamans and Analysts provides a model by which to understand the wounded healer phenomenon. It provides evidence as to how this dynamic arises and gives a theoretical model by which to understand it, as well as practical implications for the way analysts' wounds can be transformed and used in their clinical work. By examining shamanism through the lens of contemporary approaches to archetype theory, this book breaks new ground through specifying the developmental foreground to the shaman archetype, which not only underpins the wounded healer but constitutes those regarded as ‘true Jungians’. Further areas of discussion include: Siberian shamanism contemporary archetype theory countertransference phenomena in psychotherapy socio-cultural applications of psychoanalytic theory. These original and thought-provoking ideas offer a revolutionary way to understand wounded healers, how they operate and how they should be trained, ultimately challenging traditional analyst / analysand stereotypes. As such this book will be of great interest to all Jungians, both in training and practice, as well as psychoanalysts, psychotherapists and counsellors with an interest in the concept of the wounded healer.

Jungian Analysts Working Across Cultures: From Tradition to Innovation gives a fascinating account of the wide variety of experiences of Jungian analysts working in different cultures across the world. They describe and reflect on experiences of both offering and receiving training within these cross-cultural partnerships. This is a book not only about training but is also an enlightening cultural commentary for our times. The powerful bi-directionality of cultural influence and discovery is apparent in different ways in every chapter, prompting a re-appraisal of concepts essential to the core values of Jungian practice which show an outdated adherence to culture-bound attitudes. The publication of this book is a timely reminder that when Jungian analysis as we know it is floundering in some Western countries, new projects in countries seeking to develop an analytic culture give hope for sustaining our professional practice.

The field of art therapy is discovering that artistic expression can be a powerful means of personal transformation and emotional and spiritual healing. In this book, Shaun McNiff, a leader in expressive arts therapy for more than three decades, reflects on a wide spectrum of activities aimed at reviving art's traditional healing function. In chapters ranging from "Liberating Creativity" and "The Practice of Creativity in the Workplace" to "From Shamanism to Art Therapy," he illuminates some of the most progressive views in the rapidly expanding field of art therapy: • The "practice of imagination" as a powerful force for transformation • A challenge to literal-minded psychological interpretations of artworks ("black colors indicate depression") and the principle that even disturbing images have inherent healing properties • The role of the therapist in promoting an environment conducive to free expression and therapeutic energies • The healing effects of group work, with people creating alongside one another and interacting in the studio • "Total expression," combining arts such as movement, storytelling, and drumming with painting and drawing

The Fifteenth Triannual Congress of the International Association for Analytical Psychology (IAAP) took place on the grounds of St. John's College in Cambridge, England from 19 to 24 August 2001. It was a memorable occasion both in its preparation and its incarnation and the present volume is meant to preserve at least a portion of what transpired: the papers comprising the program. The presentations and events were more far-reaching and all-inclusive than ever before, incorporating numerous political and intercultural issues and including representatives from psychoanalysis and other fields of endeavour for the first time.

Jungian analysts from all over the world gathered in Montreal from August 22 to 27, 2010. The 11 plenary presentations and the 100 break-out sessions attest to the complex dynamics and dilemmas facing the community in present-day culture. The Pre-Congress Workshop on Movement as Active Imagination papers are also recorded. There is a foreword by Tom Kelly with the opening address of Joe Cambray and the farewell address of Hester Solomon. From the Contents: Jacques Languirand: From Einstein’s God to the God of the Amerindians John Hill: One Home, Many Homes: Translating Heritages of Containment Denise Ramos: Cultural Complex and the Elaboration of Trauma from Slavery Christian Roesler: A Revision of Jung’s Theory of Archetypes in light of Contemporary Research: Neurosciences, Genetics and Cultural Theory - A Reformulation Margaret Wilkinson, Ruth Lanius: Working with Multiplicity. Jung, Trauma, Neurobiology and the Healing Process: a Clinical Perspective Beverley Zabriskie: Emotion: The Essential Force in Nature, Psyche and Culture Guy Corneau: Cancer: Facing Multiplicity within Oneself Marta Tibaldi: Clouds in the Sky Still Allow a Glimpse of the Moon: Cancer Resilience and Creativity Astrid Berg, Tristan Troudart, Tawiq Salman: What could be Jungian About Human Rights Work? Bou-Yong Rhi: Like Lao Zi’s Stream of Water: Implications for Therapeutic Attitudes Linda Carter, Jean Knox, Marcus West, Joseph McFadden: The Alchemy of Attachment: Trauma, Fragmentation and Transformation in the Analytic Relationship Sonu Shamdasani, Nancy Furlotti, Judith Harris & John Peck: Jung after The Red Book

Cover -- Table of contents -- Acknowledgements -- 1 Approaching shamanism -- 2 Eighteenth and nineteenth-century interpretations -- 3 Early twentieth-century American interpretations -- 4 Twentieth-century European constructions -- 5 The Bollingen connection, 1930s-1960s -- 6 Post-war American visions -- 7 The genesis of a field of shamanism, America 1960s-1990s -- 8 A Case Study: Shamanisms in the Netherlands -- 9 Struggles for power, charisma and authority: a balance -- Bibliography -- Index

In Shamanic Dimensions of Psychotherapy: Healing through the Symbolic Process, Robin van Löben Sels uniquely and honestly recounts her personal journey toward a shamanic understanding of psychotherapy. Exploring the disruptive breakthrough of visions and dreams that occurred during her analysis, personal life, and psychoanalytic training, van Löben Sels illustrates how the phenomenology of ancient shamanism is still alive and how it is a paradigm for the emergence and maturation of the psyche in people today. This original book delves into van Löben Sels’s personal experience of the shaman, identifying such eruptions as a contemporary version of the archaic shaman’s initiatory call to vocation. The book is split into two parts. It begins by outlining the shamanic personality in history, recognizing this as an individual that has been called out of a collectively sanctioned identity into a creative life, and the unconscious shaman complex they consequently face, especially in psychotherapeutic relationships. Practical as well as theoretical, the second part outlines the shamanic attributes that underline psychotherapeutic relationships - silence, sound, mask, rhythm, gesture, movement, and respiration - and usefully describes how to use them as asanas for consciousness, or vehicles toward psychological awareness. With clinical examples and personal stories throughout, this book’s unique Jungian perspective addresses contemporary expressions of the shaman complex in our current world. Shamanic Dimensions of Psychotherapy: Healing through the Symbolic Process will be essential reading for Jungian analysts and psychotherapists in practice and in training, as well as for academics and students of Jungian and post-Jungian studies. It will be especially helpful and illuminating to those who have experienced an involuntary plunge into the depths and who seek ways to articulate their experience.

Wayward Shamans tells the story of an idea that humanity’s first expression of art, religion and creativity found form in the figure of a proto-priest known as a shaman. Tracing this classic category of the history of anthropology back to the emergence of the term in Siberia, the work follows the trajectory of European knowledge about the continent’s eastern frontier. The ethnographic record left by German natural historians engaged in the Russian colonial expansion project in the 18th century includes a range of shamanic practitioners, varied by gender and age. Later accounts by exiled Russian revolutionaries noted transgendered shamans. This variation vanished, however, in the translation of shamanism into archaeology theory, where a male sorcerer emerged as the key agent of prehistoric art. More recent efforts to provide a universal shamanic explanation for rock art via South Africa and neurobiology likewise gloss over historical evidence of diversity. By contrast this book argues for recognizing indeterminacy in the categories we use, and reopening them by recalling their complex history.