Healing Within the Blur

Catching up with old friends over the weekend, I found myself trying out the frame “trauma complex” as a way to describe what I’ve been working on in terms of my resource blog. My apical meristem if you will.

I am using the term trauma complex to suggest split off, encapsulated, episodic memories, memories which when viewed in their experiential state form, image and associated affect, were likely to have evoked archetypal layer resources. Jung’s complex theory suggests the nucleus of a complex is composed of two elements: the image of the scene of the wounding and it’s associated evoked archetypal node/energy/affect.

In my Getting Back Into the Boat post, speaking to the level of emotional intensity sufficient to trigger the episodic memory system, I noted:

“From the conceptualization of the ego-Self axis, such wounds symbolically knock the 110 voltage wired ego temporarily out of the boat of consciousness, and drop down into the deep waters of total psyche, in the realm of the Self. Here, they remain as if in suspended animation until the conditions are favorable for their re-integration. These are the original encapsulated episodic memories which form the nuclei of our complexes. On a side note “suspended” is misleading in terms of these are not energetically inert bundles of split off trauma. Their energies are not diminished by time and space.”

If I were to diagram this evolving detail, I could try just representing the experiential state complex image contained within a capsule. This highlights the encapsulated trauma complex’s functioning as a bundle. Let’s try this:

Note the the experiential state, including the red C designating it is also the nucleus of the complex, all contained within a capsule. The encapsulation detail helps us remember the importance of recognizing the partial cure as a solution which must be mortified. The dissociative defenses maintaining the partial cure will not allow direct, healing contact with the original wound episode. Until we can drop the partial cure defenses, we will continue to be locked out.

Gazing upon the image, I must say it also looks a bit like a bandage!

Here my emphasis is the trauma complex is a more or less effective container for binding and containing an episode of this-world-relational-failure, with, importantly, it’s associated evoked mythological/archetypal image and affect. I proposed this in my Musings on Metamorphosis: the Complex as Chrysalis post.

This system for managing the original split off trauma relies on encapsulation of the original wounding, like the oyster’s ability to create a pearl.

Next time around I want to talk about this from the perspective of dueling partial cures.

Yours? Mine? Shall we dance?

This entry was posted on December 2, 2018 at 1:27 pm and is filed under Complexes and More, Connecting the Dots Series. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site.