Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting;
The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting
And cometh from afar;
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory . . . .
Wm. Wordsworth
A Jungian approach to psychotherapy maintains two simultaneous perspectives: the overt interactive field of dialogue and relationship between the individual and the therapist, and the subtle-field of relationship where attention is paid to ‘what is not said,’ i.e. that which is communicated metaphorically through the body, the symptom, behavior patterns, and the products of the imagination.
Early Relational Trauma and Psychoanalytic Developmental Theory
Chronic early failures and frustrations in emotional attunement by parents or caregivers leave us orphaned from ourselves and hungry to be seen and to be affiliated with persons, ideologies, religious leaders, self-help gurus, and philosophies which promise to organize our emotional experiences and bind fragmenting anxiety and other painful emotions.
The Psychobiology of Attachment Trauma
Schore’s (2001) research has demonstrated that when brain centers controlling a child’s response to fear are stimulated over and over again, a situation of overload occurs causing normal connections for attachment behaviors to be pruned while the ones for fear responses become abnormally fused.
Jung taught that dream images are the back side of the instincts and emotions. In the images lie emotional realities unknown to consciousness. Working with the images and symbols produced by the unconscious – that which lies outside our everyday awareness – can illuminate how the different, affectively-laden parts of ourselves are interacting with each other on the inner stage and thus influencing our day-to-day ego, our felt sense of self in the world.
Copyright © by Judy Isaac
