Wounded Healer Archetype

                            Wounded Healer Archetype

                                 

"One who knows his lot to be the lot of all other men is a safe man to guide them. One who recognizes all men as members of his own body is a sound man to guard them.”

Lao Tzu

It is important to recognize the significance of the Wounded Healer Archetype to try and bring more compassion into our world. Indeed, Com-passion (feeling with) can be seen as synonymous with one who, although they are wounded, is trying to help another. Christ said “Physician heal thy self..,” he is telling us healers to first take a look at ourselves!

It is mind-boggling to me that there are so many psychotherapists and schools of psychotherapy in which the idea of a therapist in training, getting their own therapy or doing a fearless moral inventory, is either not mentioned, or only mildly suggested. I consider this to be a breach of professional ethics.

The reason for this is because there is an overwhelming percentage of helping professionals (according to Alison Barr’s research, 73.9%), who have suffered the exact kind of psychological wounds they are being trained to treat.

So the obvious deduction is; if a therapist hasn’t worked on their own issues, they are avoiding their issues by “helping” others. This is a recipe for malpractice.

So this should be the first question you ask a therapist you are considering seeing; “To what extent have you worked on your own shit?”

If it can be established that they have indeed, worked on their own shit, then you can proceed into the benefits of accessing the wounded healer archetype, and therein lies the potential curative power of a therapeutic relationship.

               

The Wounded healer is a term created by the psychologist Carl Jung. The idea states that an analyst is compelled to treat patients because the analyst himself is "wounded".

Understanding the dynamics of the wounded healer provides a theoretical and practical understanding of the importance of empathy and mutuality in the healing process. It is through the common humanity that the therapist is able to contact within themselves and convey to the client, that the client’s own ability to heal is ignited.  In the 12-steps, this is called a “me too” experience, or an “I’m not alone” experience.

 The archetype of the wounded healer is valuable in acknowledging cultural diversity, as well as universal parallels between healing practices, this is the value of working with archetypes, because they are truly cross cultural and universal in terms of human experience. Indeed, this is a good working definition of an archetype.

According to Jung, for the wounded healer, the therapeutic encounter should be regarded as a dialectical process "in which the doctor, as a person, participates just as much as the patient."

This is the opposite of the classical Freudian approach of the therapist as a blank slate that sits behind the couch not even facing the patient. A dialectical process is an engaged, related, mutual, and equally respectful dialogue in which questions and answers are explored and mutually worked on. It is a collaborative process in which each party has accountability and responsibility. Of course there is a power differential, but a good therapist minimizes this power difference in order to maximize the client’s empowerment.

According to Jung, "a good half of every treatment that probes at all deeply, consists in the doctor examining himself, for only what he can put right in himself can he hope to put right in the patient."

This means that the therapist must be able to track the nature of what the client is presenting, and have a real time experience of any and all correlates within themselves that are comparable within the client. It doesn’t mean the therapist has to reveal what is comparable within themselves, but they sure as hell better be aware that it’s there! Otherwise, they will enter into a dangerous territory of counter-transference and potentially be meeting their own needs through their client. Herein lies malpractice, and the importance of good supervision for therapists. 

In the therapeutic encounter, the healer tries to activate the wounded patient's own healing powers. This is comparable to the naturopathic philosophy of healing which states;

“All living beings possess an intelligent, living energy which gives us an innate ability to heal. Naturopathic Medicine, calls this energy the Vital Force. Oriental Medicine traditions calls it  Qi or Chi (as in Tai Chi); Ayurvedic Medicine from India refers to it as Prana, Wilhelm Reich called it Orgone Energy. Every traditional culture from around the world has their own term for this phenomenon, and more than 95 different names for the Vital Force have been recorded.”

Just as there is a Vital Force relevant to physical healing, so too is there a psychic Vital Force, for the mind and body are two sides of the same coin.

        Greek Myth-The origins of Western Mind

As I’ve written previously, the study of the Greek culture gives us in large part the genesis of our Western Mind, this is certainly true in terms of psychology. The Greek myth particularly relevant to the Wounded Healer is the myth of Chiron.

                                            

Chiron was the eldest and wisest of the centaurs, a tribe of half-horse men. The meaning of the Greek word Chiron is "hand" (noun) or "skilled with hands" (adjective) and it is closely related to the Greek word chirourgos (surgeon). So we can see right away, etymologically, healing is involved here.

Unlike the rest of the centaurs notorious for their drunkenness, vulgarity, and violent behavior, Chiron was an immortal god, civilized, learned, peaceful, and gentle. Son of the Titan Kronos and half-brother of Zeus, Chiron was a renowned and revered teacher. He was especially known for his great skill in medicine, mentoring many of the great mythological heroes, among them Heracles, Achilles, Jason, and Asclepius. Again, referencing Asclepius we are invoking healing;

Asclepius represents the healing aspect of the medical arts; his daughters are Hygieia, from which we derive our word hygiene, ("Hygiene", the goddess/personification of health, cleanliness, and sanitation), Iaso (the goddess of recuperation from illness), Aceso (the goddess of the healing process), and Panacea (the goddess of universal remedy).

According to the myth, Chiron was wounded accidentally by Heracles's arrow coated with the poisonous blood of Hydra. The unbearably painful wound was incurable, but Chiron, immortal because of his divine ancestry, could not die. The agonized centaur roamed the earth and continued to heal the sickly and the injured. He thus came to embody the paradox of the great healer who can heal everyone except himself. Eventually, he wandered to the place where Prometheus was undergoing his own agony. Here, at last, he found freedom from his pain: he volunteered to give his immortality to Prometheus and now could die. Instead of being consigned to Hades, Zeus gave him a place amongst the stars as the constellation Sagittarius or Centaurus.

                

So we see here, in this myth of Chiron, several central motifs  associated with the wounded healer: 1) The wounded healer is kind, gentle and intelligent, 2) He is a gifted man of medicine, 3) He is a teacher to many students of medicine, 4) His wounds are arbitrary and meaningless; they occur accidentally, 5) He does not welcome his suffering, and does not embrace pain voluntarily; the tradition of martyrdom is thus ruled out from the Wounded Healer narrative, 6) His suffering is endless and hopeless; although a great healer, he cannot cure himself; he is immortal, so he cannot wish for death to end his suffering, 7) He keeps healing and teaching others despite his suffering, and 8) The end of the healer's suffering endows it with meaning, and involves saving the life of someone else (Prometheus) and achieving his own freedom of agony.

                              Hannibal As Magus

The Wounded Healer archetype is connected (all archetypes are connected, which parallels an integrated psyche), to the archetype of the Magician (The Magus).

We can begin with three wise men. Who were the three Magi that came to visit the Christ infant, and why? The answer to this draws attention to the blending of East and West, and certainly connects Christianity with more esoteric practices and knowledge. This is especially true in the gaping gap of Jesus’ biography that leaves his entire adolescence and early adulthood unaccounted for.

The ancient Magi were a hereditary priesthood of the Medes credited with profound and extraordinary religious knowledge. After some Magi, who had been attached to the Median court, proved to be expert in the interpretation of dreams, Darius the Great established them over the state religion of Persia. It was in this dual capacity whereby civil and political counsel was invested with religious authority, that the Magi became the supreme priestly caste of the Persian Empire, and continued to be prominent during the subsequent Seleucid, Parthian, and Sasanian periods.

So the Magi (which we derive our word magic), were a priestly cast that possessed extraordinary psychic and esoteric knowledge.

The Magus archetype is the archetype of the psychotherapist or the artist because it is the realm of secret, esoteric, healing, radical, and transformative knowledge, it is the modern equivalent of a Magician, Sorcerer, or Shaman.

The word Shaman comes from the Siberian language, and means “person of power.” Shaman were the ones that did the cave paintings 40,000 years ago and led initiatory rites of passage transforming boys into men.

Shaman were always the fringe of a tribe, they were often very different, odd, homosexual, radical, dangerous, and didn’t fit in to the status quo, however they possessed tremendous power and were sought for their healing, divination, and astrological advice on matters ranging from planting, marriage, and war.

                

Its true most training programs or graduate schools would have a hard time marketing themselves as; “Come to Harvard school of psychotherapy, and we’ll train you to be a modern Shaman!”

Still, psychology deals with psychic energy, and that is the realm of the Magus. But it is volatile energy, not unlike radioactive isotopes and should be handled with extreme caution.

There is a definite danger and risk when client’s and professionals start digging around in the gritty underground world of the psychic playground. Jung felt that depth psychology can be potentially dangerous, because the analyst is vulnerable to being infected by his client’s wounds by having his wounds reopened. To avoid this, the analyst must have an ongoing relationship with the unconscious, otherwise he or she could identify with the "healer archetype", and create an inflated ego.

When someone is identified with an archetype instead of accessing or relating to it, they are certifiably insane. These are the people that get locked up because they think they’re Jesus.

Archetypes are sources of pure psychic energy, so we cannot get too close or involved, lest they will fry us! The story of Icarus flying too close to the sun, or when, in the Bible, God says; "You cannot see My face, for no man can see Me and live!" This is referencing the intensity of archetypal energy that is wise to approach with caution. Artists are very familiar with frying themselves with archetypal energy, that’s why so many of them die so young.

We can reference my favorite shrink Hannibal Lector here. Hannibal, as portrayed in the movies and books, was an awesome therapist to the extent that he could empathetically and intuitively "read" any and all cues and signals the patient was presenting. He could smell Clarisse’s perfume and “know” that she had a silence of the lambs’ fetish. But Dr. Lector was not in touch with his own woundedness, so he became inflated and grandiose with his skills to the point of eating his patients, this is very bad for business!

In summary, we can see the Wounded Healer archetype as a very powerful source of vitality and integration of the psyche that requires one skillful in the navigation of others as well as one’s own woundedness.

The competent therapist is consciously aware of her own personal wounds. These wounds may be activated in certain situations especially if the therapist’s wounds are similar to her own.

The client’s wounds affect the wounds of the therapist. The therapist either consciously or unconsciously mirrors this awareness back to her client. If the therapist is consciously mirroring, it will engender a healing relationship between client and therapist, if the therapist is unconsciously projecting her own wounds and needs onto the client it can be very harmful.