The Objective Psyche in Psychoanalysis and Shamanism

Sunday, June 23rd, 2013

One of the stories that is told about Jung is about an incident that occurred during a group discussion. A reference was made about an analysand who dreamt that she was walking on the moon and Jung’s  response was “She was on the moon.”

If we can approach our clients with an attitude as if everything that they said and felt were true then what may have been elusive or shrouded in symbolic interpretation may be more actively explored. I am not suggesting engaging in a practice of creating false memories, or confusing narrative truth with historical truth, but I am suggesting holding an open mind with everything that is occurring in the moment – that not only includes thoughts, but feelings, and somatic sensations as well.

What I am proposing is an extension of the analytic third. From both my clinical experience and personal experience over the last ten years working with altomesayoqs (high shamans) in Peru I have come to accept that (1) The process of analysis time is often layered rather sequential and that the actual experience of time is a subjective interpretation rather than an objective construct.(2) There is an essential energetic level that exists beyond the archetypal realm where everything is connected in the objective psyche that extends beyond the individual psyche and the space/time continuum; (3) The personal experience of complexes in the subtle body extends beyond personal psyche as a cluster of feeling around  an archetypal core, on a continuum that potentially move into the energetic field to include being states with their own individual soul consciousness and experience. (4) That in conjunction with time being layered, a layered continuum between matter and spirit exists simultaneously that corresponds with the experience of time.

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