The Soul of Psychology returning to the Body
Author: Christopher Chayban
The relationship between early approaches to the unconscious and the later “scientific psychotherapy,” is according to Ellenberger an unbroken one to which, I beg to differ.
“Historically, modern dynamic psychotherapy derives from primitive medicine and an uninterrupted continuity can be demonstrated between exorcism and magnetism, magnetism and hypnotism, and hypnotism and the modern dynamic schools. ” (Discovery of the Unconscious pg.49)
This relationship has gradually split from the psychosomatic factor to only “the psychic factor.” And furthermore, has gone from public display in indigenous peoples to the private room of the clinician’s office. Ellenberger says that for the indigenous people, there was no “clear-cut” distinction between the body and the mind, as there is today and that the medicine man was considered to be a “psychosomatician.” (Discovery of the Unconscious pg.39).
I actually happen to think that this is a huge problem of the quote “relationship” that has been left out. There is a rampant increase of anxiety (especially in the Western world) that appears to have arrived and nested itself in the psyches of the modern millions. This anxiety is leaving people dumbfounded as what to do about their symptoms, the regulation of anxiety and also their depression.
For the modern, the suggested solution is the prescription drugs that aim at curing their disease by getting back into the body but without the patient doing much work. This teaches the patient little about her or himself and what they may be going through from a mental illness standpoint, which actually may be nothing at all. I recently saw a shared post of an article on Facebook that was called, “No, you don’t have a disorder. You have feelings.” (Areo Magazine). We have (likely with technology contributing to the matter), reached such a state of disembodiment that we can’t even differentiate between mental illness and a normal emotion! We are alienated from the archetypes who also have a somatic factor!
Now, Ellenberger admits that “Dynamic psychotherapy produced a revival of psychosomatic medicine” and that the whole man must be supplemented by other approaches (Discovery of the Unconscious pg.49). Things like exercise and yoga (to which I advocate and do my best to incorporate with psychological theories), are well known in helping the aid of anxiety and depression. Time magazine wrote an article about how Yoga helps depression and the mention a study done by the “Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine” that took thirty people from the ages of eighteen to sixty-four with clinical depression but not on any sort of medicine and placed them in a ninety minute yoga class outside of home and four, thirty minute classes at home. The results found that after three months, their depression scores from a questionnaire they had taken had decreased by fifty percent (TIME Magazine).
So, in this regard, we may allot points for the indigenous methods, to whom, the disease was a matter of finding out where the disease has localized in the body, much like the Yogic chakras, to which Jung called “localizations of consciousness,” (The Psychology of Kundalini Yoga pg.xxvi). The medicine man would suck out or extract the disease out from that region located in the patient’s body (Discovery of the Unconscious pg.10).
Jung recognized the loss of this connection in the relationship between primitive and medicine and took criticism for aligning with the primitive view. He did his best (although he himself was guilty of emphasizing only the Psyche at times) to re-incorporate the practices of the “primitives,” which are the “Roots” of Depth Psychology. As Ellenberger describes that some of the indigenous healers claimed to perform their cures through the agency of the gods, were enacting a “psychodrama” (Discovery of the Unconscious pg.28) that Jung brought back to life with the analysis of dream figures. These dream figures had “archetypes” or archetypal energy that was behind them. Archetypes being common to humans cross-culturally. Jung emphasized never losing contact with the eternal and natural man (who is in the psyche and part of the body). A significant, and mending factor to the relationship between indigenous and modern medicine.
It is this alienation from the archetype (s) that in my opinion is the main alienation between the practice of indigenous peoples and the practice of modern psychotherapy. Despite, them both, needing each to go their separate ways for a while, in order for one; modern psychotherapy to develop on its own and discover the psychic factor as a thing in itself but also two; to create an unconscious undercurrent that would force us to remember the body and remember the value of psychosomatic medicine that originated with the indigenous peoples. The future looks bright for a merger, thanks to the experiments, findings and also errors that have been handed down by the predecessors of Depth Psychology and the medicine men of ancient times.
Resources:
Ellenberger, H. (2006). The discovery of the unconscious: The history and evolution of dynamic psychiatry. New York: Basic Books.
Jung, C. G., & Shamdasani, S. (2012). The Psychology of Kundalini Yoga Notes of the Seminar Given in 1932. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
MacMillan, A. (2017, March 08). It’s Official: Yoga Helps Depression. Retrieved from http://time.com/4695558/yoga-breathing-depression/?utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=social-share-article&utm_content=20190102&fbclid=IwAR2FSoWyoeWNDPYJgPwTaw0xUoJB2OJ3JRrdI6d9LwrJec4x8m4hRUhc0Ro
No, You Don’t Have a Disorder. You Have Feelings. (2018, July 09). Retrieved from https://areomagazine.com/2018/07/08/no-you-dont-have-a-disorder-you-have-feelings/?fbclid=IwAR0jHdNopdMM4bRtYmy0HEn5X8XDFWJ02xG9WeTqs6UPtTAOSzchBXuC5uI
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