The wounded healer: shamanism and analytical psychology

Abstract

To help a person who is suffering is to try, from his history, to help him give meaning to his live. As we study other cultures and their myths, we are enriching the possibilities of getting close to our patient, helping him to find and to accept the myth that will govern his own life. The figure of the shaman is related to the myth of the wounded healer in various mythologies. In societies his figures corresponds to priest, physician, counselor and maintainer of the traditions of the group's culture. But the shaman must first go through an initiatory process, a heroic journey, before he can become a healer. The religious function is manifested in the initiatory processes and defines who is capable of being a representative: it arises from the need to understand symbols and their meanings, from the human universal contents. In the Jungian formation, the search to be an analyst takes place in the necessary junction of theory and analytic experience, and the analyst needs to submit himself to experiences that provide contact with the contents of the collective unconscious through techniques of dream analysis, active imagination, artistic production and others. Through the relationship of the deep unconscious psyche with the consciousness, the founding myths are updated, allowing the candidate to be an analyst who redeems his individuality in the search to help others to do the same.