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Psychotherapist in Muizenberg

I am passionate about the psychoanalytic approach to psychotherapy for it offers the opportunity to engage with the fundamental aspects of the psyche. From the work of Dr. Carl Jung we know that dreams and natural forces in the unconscious can guide us in the process of exploring our deeper selves. There is a tendency in the unconscious to want to restore inner equilibrium.

As part of your therapy, I offer the possibility of creative work as an integrated part of the therapeutic process, broadening our approach to the unconscious, but it remains optional. This approach is particularly beneficial when dealing with trauma. Traumatic experiences from the past often continue to make their influence felt throughout life in unpleasant and disruptive ways.

I offer individual psychotherapy to adults in my professional capacity as a registered medical doctor; my approach is based mainly on the work of Dr. Carl Jung. I am a Jungian Analyst Candidate at SAAJA.

Stone

A woman dreamed of a precious stone, buried in her garden. A precious stone is a symbol of the lapis lazuli, the self. In modern culture, diamonds are often associated with making a commitment in a long-term relationship, felt to signify the rock on which it is built.

We associate the stone with permanence, something may be ‘written in stone’. Stones have also been used to shape religious objects and temples since ancient times. Stonehenge continues to leave us in awe. Meteorites were found in some ancient temples and were revered as the deity itself. ‘Petra’ means rock, and Peter was said to be the rock on which the church was built.

As a child, Jung loved to sit on a large stone. He used to think that he was also the stone. Then again he was the boy. He would get off the stone, feeling confused. Was he Carl, the boy, or was he the stone, old and wise? This was the beginning of what he called the number one and number two personalities, leading to his understanding of the ego and the Self.

The aim of the process of individuation is to restore the relationship to the self, an inner mystery. A positive outcome of the process may culminate in the integration of the inner opposites, symbolized as the masculine and feminine principles, in the sacred inner marriage.

Later in life Jung ‘rescued’ a rock which had been rejected by the mason. It was a perfect cube, too large for its purpose, and he let this stone speak for itself. The first thing that he chiseled into the stone, was a Latin verse:

“Here stands the mean uncomely stone,

‘Tis very cheap in price!

The more it is despised by fools,

The more loved by the wise.” (MDR, p. 227)

In alchemy, it was said that the cornerstone, the lapis, was rejected by the masons and was called the orphan. In therapy we often discover essential aspects of our personalities that were rejected early in life, and which may turn out to be the cornerstone of the individuation process and the core of the personality.

Photocredit: Marcelo Jordao, Yarden Life Center in Brazil.

Trickster creates

Feeling distressed, we might engage with a creative medium within a contained space and be surprised to discover the reality of the living psyche, of unfamiliar content in the new creation, a message ‘from the deep.’ If we create the right circumstances, the inner child will come.

A traumatized child has difficulty in relaxing and playing. A playful approach to life’s difficulties allows one to play around with possibilities in difficult times, to adapt.

“Trickster makes this world,” he creates. (Lewis Hyde, 1998) Trickster sits on the ‘border;’ he ‘opens or closes’ the connecting door between our inner and outer worlds. He re-members or dis-members, symbolizes or dissociates us. (Kalsched, 1997, 197)

A symbol is an image of psychic energy, a complex fact, not fully understood by consciousness; it portrays “an objective visible meaning, behind which an invisible profounder meaning is hidden.” (Jacoby, 1957, 77) It contains conscious aspects as well as content from the unconscious. From a conscious point of view, it often appears as a paradox.

Jung described the Transcendent Function of the psyche like this: the conscious personality is goal-directed and has to adapt to the outer world; this is what it has to do. But this is often not beneficial to the whole or complete personality. Because it is mostly unconscious, it is not possible for the conscious personality to have this perspective. The self, the totality, then tries to restore the balance by way of the symbol, e.g. through a slip of the tongue, a dream image, or in symbolical creative work.

In symbolical creative work one may find a window on the unfolding, lifelong process of becoming. When relating to it, inviting it into one’s real lived life, it nourishes immature wounded aspects of the personality, in turn supporting the process of individuation, of growing towards greater maturity.

Water

We associate our emotional life with water. Without our world of emotions, we are stranded in a dry blazing desert, the world of one-sided mind. Logical thinking has its place but is often over emphasized in modern culture. Water flows together: our emotional life unites things. When cleansed, it is nourishing. Without water, no life is possible.

Water is able to flow around an obstruction and flow on. It fills up the empty space and takes on its shape: it adapts. Water reflects light. When we are able to relate to our emotional life, we are better able to reflect upon ourselves and our lives. Mourning forms a central aspect of the process of self-acceptance. Grief allows the old life to become compost for the new.

Water is the solvent: old structures, depleted of their content, may be dissolved in water. After a period of drought, rain brings a feeling of release, of relief of tension. When a pregnant woman’s water breaks, birth is imminent. Creation myths often tell us that water was the source from which everything originated.

‘The waters’ have been associated with the Great Mother symbolism since ancient times: the place of the waters is the Great Mother, and the place from which we might be reborn, renewed. Creation myths tell us about upper and lower waters. The waterfall connects the waters of above with the waters of below, it connects the higher values with the everyday world. The tree and the fountain likewise connect upper and lower; it draws up the water from below, the water of the earth, the well-springs of life, wisdom, and make it available to everyone who will delve down deep enough within her/himself.

A more conscious integrated perspective on life brings the possibility of compassion that is objectively contained, water with shape, also sometimes called Eros.

The well

Our world is dominated by rationality and superficiality, resulting in loneliness and meaninglessness, but by restoring the relationship with one’s deeper personality one may draw from the wellsprings of Life.

All over the world, wells have been dug by hand since the ninth millennium BCE (1). Human settlements have always been dependent for survival on a well with a fresh clear spring, so that social structures developed around it.

The well resembles a tree, for water can be drawn up to serve life and growth similar to how a tree draws up water through its roots and fibers. It conveys the idea of a dispensing of nourishment, available to all. Life is inexhaustible. It grows neither less nor more; it exists for one and all. Generations come and go, and all may enjoy life in its inexhaustible abundance. (2)

Wells have been associated with sacred ceremonial descent, ritually lived, for millennia. Like the holes in the ground, hand-dug by men and women over time, it resembles the development of consciousness over time. Archetypal patterns of descent, linking above and below, ego and Self, became more fully known by humanity and potentially available to anyone who would ‘go down all the way’ to the roots, who ‘does not neglect the work’ (2).

A well needs to be maintained, cleaned, lined. Through Jung’s psychology, the existence and mechanisms of this psychic structure was made conscious and accessible to any individual who felt called upon to undertake the journey so that the inner relationship with one’s roots may be restored and the individual replenished by the waters of Life to find connectedness in life and meaningful nourishment.

1. Wikipedia.org, well

2. I Ching, p. 185 – 6

Symbolism of the tree

The tree represents the manifestation of the life-force, of our ability to grow into greater maturity; when faced with an impossible life situation, one should not try to force anything, but ‘stay in one place and grow, like a tree.’ (Jung, Dream Seminars, 1929)

Growing is a slow process. Only swamp plants shoot up overnight. Inner growth may enable one to outgrow and rise above a difficult life situation, to attain a more objective perspective and discover alternative options that may have been there all along. A very large tree may grow from a very small seed.

The seed has to break open and grow towards the light, the higher values. Breaking open is painful, but necessary; without it there will be no growth. The tree roots us. Its roots stretch away into the darkness of the earth, into the shadow. Like the fountain, the tree may draw water from deep beneath the earth, from the well-springs of life, if the roots reach deep enough.

A tree goes through seasons of spring, summer, autumn and winter. After the death-like feeling of winter, stripping away the old, new life returns, blossoming, ripening our fruit. Animals and birds may be fed and sheltered. When the time comes again, we shed our beautiful autumn colors so that it may become compost for new life. Our lives circle continuously through periods of spring, summer, autumn, winter and spring again.

Synchronicity

At Richard Wilhelm’s memorial service in 1930 Jung expressed his gratitude for the rich contribution that Wilhelm made to Western society and to him in person. He singled out Wilhelm’s translation of the I Ching and described it as radiating the simplicity and ‘plantlike’ wisdom of Chinese culture, emerging like a light out of thousands of years of dark background ‘horrors,’ suffering. (1)

In Western culture it answers a need, with Christianity having become ‘debilitated.’ Western culture is tired of rationalism and intellectualism; it “wants to hear truths that broaden rather than restrict, that do not obscure, but enlighten, that do not run off them like water, but penetrate them to the marrow.” But new sensations alone will not help us; we have to “earn the right to it by working on ourselves.” (2)

The I Ching is based on an acausal system, as opposed to the familiar Western system of cause and effect, and centers around the concept of what Jung had named synchronicity or meaningful coincidence. Synchronicity refers to two or more events which appeared simultaneously, born from the same moment; they are meaningfully related, but not causally.  (3)  

Jung says: “Synchronicity therefore means the simultaneous occurrence of a certain psychic state with one or more external events which appear as meaningful parallels to the momentary subjective state and, in certain cases, vice versa.” (4)

Jung wrote a foreword to Wilhelm’s translation of the I Ching. He viewed it as a testimony to his individual experience of the book; he personified the book and asked it for its judgement on Jung’s intention of presenting it to the Western mind. In answer the I Ching told him “of its religious significance, of the fact that at present it is unknown or misjudged, of its hope of being restored to a place of honor.” (5)

The I Ching whose wisdom may be said to center around the principle of ‘tao’, refers to a quest for meaning in life, which has become a collective phenomenon in our time (6). Seen from this perspective the I Ching can be a great support to anyone seeking deeper meaningful containment.

Image credit: Bodhi Tree Leaf Yin Yang artwork from the Royal Thai Art website.

References:

1 – 2 + 6. CG Jung, CW 8. Richard Wilhelm: In Memoriam, par 87 – 90.

3. CG Jung, CW 8 par 849.

4. CG Jung, CW 8 par 850.

5. Foreword by CG Jung from I Ching, The Wilhelm Edition, p. xxviii.

Black Madonna, Forgotten

More than 500 shrines of the Black Madonna appeared world-wide, but mostly in central Europe, between the 11th and 15th centuries. Scholars suggest that she represents ancient goddesses, like Artemis, Diana, Cybele, Isis and others. (1)

Judy Zappacosta, Jungian analyst from California, researched her modern presence in Europe, she said: “I was very moved by the essence of sitting before a feminine dark figure that had such a deep interiority to her that she just pulls you in, into darkness, into silence, and actually into mystery…

“There’s an ownership that is taken up by the local people, that they are the keepers of, they say, “the Lady,” [who] is part of their lives in a very everyday way… they change her clothing; they have festivals, dances, lots of relationship to fertility, and motherhood, and things that bring them close to the people that are beyond the church’s style of owning a particular icon. The Black Madonna seems to have slipped through ownership by the church… she lives within chapels all through the places that you usually find her… way upon rural wild wilderness places, less-travelled regions… [where she] has always been discovered…”(2)

The Black Madonna can be seen as a personification of the forgotten Great Mother. Over millennia, the unconscious, personified as the feminine principle, has become gradually more suppressed by consciousness, personified as the masculine principle, in all of us. As aspects of the unconscious became submerged, it became the task of the shaman/ess to undertake the descent into the underworld, maintaining a relationship to this forgotten world. This is e.g. portrayed in the myths of Inanna, Persephone and Orpheus.

Later, even this process of descent into the underworld became forgotten, until it was made accessible again by Jung’s psychology, so that we might consciously undertake the inner journey.

The silent form of the Black Madonna may inform and contain us each on our own journey, in our dark night of the soul, as we grapple with our fate. It is her call: by heeding it, by following her lead, we each in our own way contribute to the restoration of her temple.

References:

  1. Website of Europe up close: Article on The Mystery of the Black Madonna
  2. Website: Depth Insights Blog: Symbolism of the Black Madonna, a Jungian Perspective, Interview with Judy Zappacosta

Aion

Only once did Jung name a book after a god; this god was Aion. Aion-Khronos represents a father-god, Greco-Roman with Persian influences. His cult, Mithraism, (100 – 500 AD) was destroyed by Christianity. (1) Jung said about Aion:

“In the cult of Mithras there is the key god Aion. He is represented with the winged body of a man and the head of a lion, encoiled by a snake which rises up over his head. He is Infinite Time and Long Duration, the supreme god of the Mithraic hierarchy, and creates and destroys all things, a sun-god. As the lion-headed god with the snake around his body, he represents the union of opposites, light and darkness, male and female, creation and destruction. He is represented as having his arms crossed and holding a key in each hand. He is the spiritual father of St. Peter, for he too holds the keys. The keys which Aion is holding are the keys to the past and future. The idea of the key is often associated with the mysteries in the cave.” (2)

In the Mithraic mysteries the serpent and the lion are opposites; to be entwined is to be devoured, to return to the mother’s womb. As a symbol of time, Aion has the zodiac portrayed on his body. Time is expressed through dawning and extinction of consciousness, death and rebirth, to come into being through ‘infinitely long duration,’ through repetitive transformations of the creative force, libido. (3)

As in the ancient moon mysteries, where Dionysus was sacrificed as the bull-god and son-lover of the Great Mother, symbolizing the sacrifice of animal nature, so in the Mithraic mysteries (4) Mithras overcame his immortal brother symbolized as the bull, by killing, eating and integrating him ceremonially. (1)

Jung described Mithraism as a complete solar psychology, aimed at restoring the relationship between the mortal and immortal brothers: Mithras as consciousness and the bull as the instinct or archetype, the Self, similar to St. Peter and Christ. (5)

The slow unfolding of this archetypal process, the cruel immaturity of the god, the cultural manifestation of the process, have to be suffered through by humanity over time. This is how we as humans contribute to the manifestation, the creation, of the god.

The chaotic times that we live in may also be seen against this background.

References:

  1. Ancient History Encyclopedia / Mithraic Mysteries
  2. CW 18 par 266
  3. CW 5 par 425
  4. CW 5 par 659
  5. CW 5 par 288