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On The Importance of Getting Triggered

September 15, 2025

As part of my preparation for co-leading an embodied, community dream group, I have been reviewing some of my earlier conceptual stuff and have revised this one a bit.

The dream group offering is very exciting and will focus on bringing in dreams and support for being with them in more depth. How precious is that?! This will not be so much a thinking about and analyzing them. That being said, as a part of my preparation for the community dream group I came across a favorite Edward Whitmont and Sylvia Perera quote which puts complexes right at the center of dream life: “… every dream points to an unconscious complex and to the archetypal dynamism behind the complex’s emotionally charged layers.”

This observation is very intriguing to me. We can consider dreams as out-picturings of inner life, ie: the image and affect based dream symbolism points directly to unfinished emotional business. Consider then the role of enactments, in waking life, in bringing subsymbolic material into our shared, waking world. I am thinking it will be helpful to consider dream symbolism and enactments as being on a continuum. Our core defenses work to protect us from being re-traumatized by still unbearable, repressed experiences. (See post on Freud’s discussion of compromise formations.) I want to distill my view of complexes down into a everyday life kind of familiarity. How might we usefully orient to complexes? This early post is one broader way into all of this stuff. May the force be with you!

From The Importance of Getting Triggered post (9/15/2018):

Thinking about my conceptual frame Couple Experiential State Complex as Activated Threshold, I have been struck this week by the importance of focusing on tracking when we, self and others, get emotionally triggered.

By using the word triggered, I am hoping to tap into our collective, universal sense of knowing we are getting hijacked by something intensely emotional. As in getting your button(s) pushed.

This shift in emotional intensity is the simplest indicator we may be activating, or activated, announcing to all who can perceive, the emergence of the blur.

From this perspective, when caught in the middle of a microfracture in communication, can we recognize the experience as meaningful? Is it possible this really is an unbidden (not ego driven), spontaneous opportunity for healing? What if there is no such thing as (fighting over) little stuff with regards to our archaic wounds to loving?

Fred Kaufman has a post on LinkedIn Every Emotion Is A Love Story. I find this to be a great opening assertion! If true, in accepting the validity of the emotion, under what circumstances is this present  emotion appropriate? We call for any associations, feelings, sensations, and memories that can help us understand the true context/setting giving rise to the emotion. When and where was this emotion a normal reaction to what was happening? As Rumi advises in A night full of talking that hurts…: Everything has to do with loving and not loving.

Preparing oneself to enter into such a healing moment includes learning to see the power struggle as a co-created complex. From this perspective, the ritualistic elements reflect what we think of as repetition compulsions or re-enactments of the wounding. In alignment with Bromberg’s description of co-created dissociative enabled enactments, these bring the essence of our unfinished business palpably into the present moment. This is the layer which drives the transference and counter-transference dance. In this blur, how are each of us standing in for the important others populating our complexes?

In his discussion of complexes in their favorable aspect, John Perry observes: “The repetition compulsion, as has been pointed out so often, provides the ego the occasion again and again to encounter these rejected components of development in order finally to assimilate them in some happy moments…” My sense of what he means by rejected components of development is simply the recognition in the absence of elder functions being available at the time of the wounding to help protect the vulnerable child or adult, and/or help metabolize the unbearable affects, the unmediated violation is certain to overwhelm the vulnerable psyche, necessitating the activation of archetypal layer defenses, ie: a trauma complex. What was needed at the time to understand and work through the emotional overwhelm is still needed. We can see that we really need now is what the elder knows, the functions needed to bring us through… We keep looking for them in anyone we intuitively sense may be carrying them.

I have played with this in thinking about the function complexes serve in my Musing on Metamorphosis: the Complex as Chrysalis post. I have to confess for me teleology is a big word, but, I believe it works!

The complex as chrysalis supports imaging the chrysalis as the container functioning to hold the original episode in a state of suspended animation (not inert however!), preserving the episodic memory based trauma in it’s original, unabstracted wholeness. Each reflects a developmental layer, ie: what anyone would see if you had a baby cam recording of the episode, as well an archetypal, evoked node layer. Here, think of it as Psyche’s lending library of hardwired, genetic memory, image/affect based guides to survival templates. The developmental, experiential state image overlaps with the archetypal evoked node, as each is comprised of the same components; the archetypal comes in when the level of intensity evokes the hardwired resources for survival.

Until we can more consciously experience this trauma complex, it will remain un-inventoried, un-integrated, and located in Bromberg’s subsymbolic mode of experience. My consideration of the conceptualization of the teleology of the complex as chrysalis, acknowledges the reality these subsymbolic mode trauma episodes complexes are the depositories of our split off experiences; they contain the original whole episodes of experience, intact and highly charged, along side of time and space. When the conditions later in life support the piercing of the containers, it is as if a time machine appears, ready to transport us back into the original experience, enabling us direct, conscious enough access to that which at the time could only be handled through life preserving dissociative defenses.

In closing, I have included the graphic above to highlight the Participation Mystique &/or Trauma Portal detail.  We are all involved all of the time with some deeper level of consciousness, a multiplicity of self-states if you will, which wants to inform us about what more is going on. Because I tend to think about getting hijacked into negative emotion enactments, I find the idea getting triggered serves the blur’s function in opening a portal into the associated trauma. The repetitive couple complex enactments do seem to provide a portal into our most painful relationship failings.

Clearly, we need each other to approach going there. What is needed may be as simple, and as difficult, as dropping into the original scene, so that we may feel all of it, within relationship, bear witness together, and get the story told. (See Sandner and Beebe for an articulation of what it takes to heal a split.) This reflects the conceptual notion traumas, until they can be suffered consciously in the service of re-integration, are incomplete initiatory experiences. Creating the conditions, essentially accessing a consciousness that can bear to suffer the wounding without splitting, is the work.

If we can only hold onto the here and now, this world enactment – what you/he/she/they did or did not do to uphold our loving – we are doomed to continue with our co-created dissociated enactments. Best practices to stay regulated and calm and more, are great and important, but they will not protect us from going there when psyche assesses the conditions are right for suffering a transformative descent and rebirth. All in the service of integration and healing.

Why not make a dedicated effort to sit with our deeper selves? We have to find a way to get to what was my part in initiating or participating in the dissociation just now? Can we strive to bear to feel as vulnerable as we may be feeling? To be continued…

Categories: Communications from the Dream Time, Complexes and More, Connecting the Dots Series, Conscious Enactment, Initiation, Poems, Transference and Countertransference
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A Dream Time Image of Piercing Encapsulated Trauma: Three Crones Receive the Knife

June 18, 2025

(Note this post is a lightly revised post from August of 2019) How can we image the sticky wicket problem of opening to split off complexes, given their/our lifetime of dedicated defenses working to keep them split off? As Donald Kalsched has observed, healing requires the dismantling of the dissociation based defenses which were our survival; one must first cure the (partial) cure. For me this dream provided an orientation to the requirement that the defenses containing an episodic memory based trauma complex must be pierced prior to them allowing direct contact with the split off image and affect charged scene. Here is the dream:

11-29-12 Thursday 4:56: Very vivid, short dream with three of us, all women. I’m one of the them, and I am also myself, observing my woman-self as if standing behind and looking over my crone self’s shoulder. We are standing together in a kitchen and we understand we are dead, or have died, and its not a problem for us. The focus turns to the idea, the recognition of the timing being right, for giving and receiving the knife. This is a ritual process we are in charge of doing periodically. It is somehow vitally important we attend to this for the sake of the community. The woman opposite me pulls out several ancient, long curved bladed knives and with great intention brings one forward towards the belly of the woman on my left, making contact and slowly plunging it into her; the movement is a bit downward; I/we can all feel it going in deeply. Then, slowly withdrawing the blade, she turns to see me, signaling now it will be my turn to receive the knife. I seem to ready myself for this by involuntarily shuddering and leaning first forward, leading with my head/chin pulling up and back, offering my belly, and then, intensely anticipating the knife finding my belly, I can’t help flinching and pulling slightly back. I am struck by how deeply I can feel this wounding, penetrating me to my core, opening me up completely; there is a moment of tremendous surrender and release of pitiful grief as I fully experience receiving the knife. Coming out of this deep practicing of having been pierced, I am silently, through my tears, attentive to what will happen immediately, my turn… I am thinking, yes, this is what we do; this is what it is like, it happens like this to all of us. It is painful. This is the way it is.”

Waking Reflections: At the time I had this dream, my sense was it was a compensatory dream pointing to my ongoing vulnerability to inflation; this offered a radical image of deflation. The intensity and directness of the action suggested I was/am experienced in the giving and receiving of this primary wound. The ritual, anchored by ritual elders, crones in this instance, seemed to be in the service of supporting the community/collective to be continuously aware of the reality of ongoing sacrifices, both conscious, in this case, but also unconscious. A contemporary example of this would be government actions which seem completely removed from the profound impact on the children separated from their parents, without notice.

My analyst at the time, Jerome Bernstein, offered what seemed to me to be a very helpful interpretation. He suggested the crone on my left represented the opening of encapsulated trauma. While I have been able to grasp the conceptual meaning of this dynamic in this regard, the dream provided a direct experience of the relationship between function/purpose of the encapsulation in defending against previously unbearable trauma, in contrast to gaining direct access in the service of healing: this piercing of the encapsulation is necessary for one to access the original wound directly.

From this perspective, this sequence signals progress on the continuum of my personal work to support the deconstruction of my own dissociation enabled defenses. (see Kalsched’s “cure the cure”.)

In order to access our wounds directly for purposes of healing the split one must both suffer and bear witness to an immersion into the original affects. As Donald Kalsched has observed, for this to occur, a deconstruction of the partial cure defenses is required.

One more comment for now: We clearly have problems with inflation at the collective level. At this level, it seems the three crones are keeping the vigil for all who may not be able to choose deflation. At the human, personal and couple work level, how often do we put our partner in the position of delivering a necessarily deflating message? What might be going on here for you?

Categories: Author, Communications from the Dream Time, Complexes and More, Connecting the Dots Series, Dream, Initiation, Learning to Think and Work Symbolically, Soul, Waking Reflections
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Ask Chuck: A Great Question about Self States

March 12, 2024

I was pleased to get an email from a reader asking: “… I had a question about self states or emotional states. How do I get out of a self state or an emotional state? For good.”

The short answer is we want to recognize self-states as important parts of ourselves that historically could not find a way to stay conscious, given our sensitivity and complexity. Growing up and getting stronger means they can start to rattle and make themselves known, and we want to commit to honoring their request to be in relationship, and begin sorting out who are they really and what will our relationship to them be? Some of these emerging self-states are actually the internalized/introjected parental and authority figure “others”, who, populating our complexes, contributed to our rejection of parts of ourselves. Lots more on that via Donald Kalsched’s work with the archetypal predator/persecutor complexes. Not going there now.

Having some additional communications with the person asking the question, I am going to connect some dots tailored to the backstory. Note, recognizing one’s sensitivity and complexity, potentially a mixed blessing at best, seems actually to me like winning life’s most important lottery!

Of note, most of us have grown up believing the key to success in life depends upon the development of a well functioning ego based consciousness, which then can identify and apply best practices in everything we do. It is interesting to remember Donald Winnicott, from the psychoanalytic side, believed a successful, integrative analysis resulted in one achieving a unit – self personality. In contrast, a Jungian perspective recognizes a multiplicity in consciousness as the rule. Jung’s concept of ego and Self, imaged as the ego-Self Axis, is extremely useful. It lends its self to a non-denominational, ancestral, archetypal understanding of consciousness in relationship to the unconscious, or collective consciousness. It also addresses the developmental stage dynamics working for and against remembering what has been unbearable. We will close with more on that below.

I am thinking the reader is familiar with self – states through prior study or analysis, or, has reviewed some of my posts on the importance of the concept (see Philip Bromberg)

In his (my Source Quote) discussion, Bromberg notes when at times he might think a person’s mood has shifted, he has learned rather to consider a shift in self – states as the explanation for the change in mood. He then offers this review:

“For those who are not yet totally at home with how the concept of self – state is different from a shift in affect or mood, let me offer a one sentence clarification: Self – states are highly individualized modules of being, each configured by its own organization of cognitions, beliefs, dominant affect and mood, access to memory, skills, behaviors, values, actions, and regulatory physiology. (Chuck’s bold)

These highly individualized modules of being sound like active, dynamic willing entities with minds of their own!

Take a minute to think about what this (having your own cast of highly individualized modules of being characters within) might mean to you. And, where might they come from?

We can start with orienting to the concept of evoked companions. When I just googled evoked companions, an excellent paper popped up reviewing some of the literature around the concept as it informs the development of spontaneous imaginary characters from early childhood and throughout our lives. And the importance of recognizing this capacity for interacting with these figures as a power, not a pathology. For here, it serves to provide context around our experience of finding unknown presences in us, coming into our world, which can be confusing and frightening.

An early mentor put it this way: After about the first 24 – 48 hours of being born, the infant is never alone, because enough actual interactions have occurred with the mother and caregivers to allow the infant to experience connections with the evoked companions; something of each of those experiences with the actual others taking care of us, provides psyche with enough to begin forming internal representations of the holding environment; when a new need arises, the associated state then evokes internal representations of the presences of the caregivers who have attended to us earlier in our very short time in the world. We are wired to begin connecting, with the help of these evoked companions. See my Developmental Considerations for more on the importance of of the gradual evolution of this internal representation of being held, refueled, and released. Countless traces of interactions, averaged and generalized over time, become the condensed, composite template for one’s Experiential State.

In every childhood, there are tremendous pressures put on the child to conform with expectations to behave, in short. A beautiful image of why this is so can be found in Robert Bly’s A Little Book on the Human Shadow:

“Let’s talk about the personal shadow first. When we were one or two years old we had what we might visualize as a 360° personality. Energy radiated out from all parts of our body and all parts of our psyche. A child running is a living globe of energy. We had a ball of energy, alright; but one day we noticed that our parents didn’t like certain parts of that ball. They said things like: ‘Can’t you be still?’ Or ‘It isn’t nice to try and kill your brother.’ Behind us we have an invisible bag, and the part of us our parents don’t like, we, to keep her parents’ love, put in the bag. By the time we go to school our bag is quite large. Then our teachers have their say: ‘Good children don’t get angry over such little things.’ By the time my brother and I were twelve in Madison, Minnesota we were known as ‘the nice Bly boys.’ Our bags were already a mile long.”

And he offers this gorgeous description of our arrival, ‘trailing clouds of glory,’:

“The drama is this. We came as infants ‘trailing clouds of glory,’ arriving from the farthest reaches of the universe, bringing with us appetites well preserved from our mammal inheritance, spontaneities wonderfully preserved from our 150,000 years of tree life, angers well preserved from our 5,000 years of tribal life – in short, with our 360° radiance – and we offered this gift to our parents. They didn’t want it. They wanted a nice girl or a nice boy. That’s the first act of the drama. It doesn’t mean our parents were wicked: they needed us for something. My mother, as a second-generation immigrant, needed my brother and me to help the family look more classy. We do the same thing to our children; it’s a part of life on this planet. Our parents rejected who we were before we could talk, so the pain of the rejection is probably stored in some pre–verbal place.”

…so the pain of the rejection is probably stored in some pre–verbal place. Somehow, somewhere in psyche, the unconscious, our bodies, all these rejected part of our selves, self -states, remain, continue on, waiting for the conditions conducive for them to re-enter our consciousness.

While we’re here, this pre-verbal place is also the realm of the sub-symbolic mode of experience, in contrast to the symbolic mode. Much more on that later as it informs our vulnerabilities to enactments.

As it is our fate, all starting out as infants, we will be overwhelmed at many points in life, and it is helpful to acknowledge and appreciate psyche’s life-saving super power of dissociation, or what we think of as the splitting off and encapsulation of unbearable, whole episodes of experience. It is as if dissociation functions to take the 110 voltage wired ego off-line in the face of 220-10,000 voltage traumatic physical and emotional episodes of overwhelm.

We can/will go on, but one more key concept for right now: recognizing the blur.

As in “healing only occurs within the blur.” When I first heard my psychoanalytical mentor reference this profound notion, at about age 41 for me, I immediately recognized how important it was to understanding the healing process. He went on to clarify that the blur state represented a betwixt and between state where in what was happening in the here and now, for real, was activating a remote time and space experience of something unfinished in our emotional life. Which is to say, our here and now experience is somehow infused, as if in a dream, with some emotionally charged unfinished business. This can be thought about as a co-created, dissociation enabled re-enactment of the wounding. The blur state refers to the peculiar experience of finding one’s self in this activated state.

Learning to recognizing this it-is-going-to-be-uncomfortable-state is key to begin having more choice in when to go there. Preparing to go there may be psyche’s first half of life task.

For a story like imaging of a number of important inter-related concepts, see my companion pages: Couple Experiential State Complex: Re-enactment of the Wounding and the Couple Experiential State Complex as Activated Threshold.

The key concept here is we all have lots of parts of ourselves that have become lost to us along the way, from birth to now. And our life’s work is re-integrate those split off parts. This requires building the capacity to hold what in earlier life was unbearable. This ultimately requires being able to consciously suffer the powerful affects evoked by unbearable traumatic experiences. Typically, this is the work of the midlife and second half of life. If one is called to this early, the challenge is to know how powerful it is and that psyche has your back. Think of it as a totally precocious midlife initiation. Because it is just that. It can be very helpful to begin to orient to Jung’s Ego-Self Axis Separation and Reunion frame.

In closing, here is an observation which suggests what we can try do to reconnect with our precious little lost selves: do your best to create/embrace opportunities to dance with your inner child:

“In healthy families, a baby forms a secure attachment with her parents as naturally as she breathes, eats, smiles, and cries. This occurs easily because of her parents’ attuned interactions with her. Her parents notice her physiological/affective states, and they respond to her sensitively and fully. Beyond simply meeting her unique needs, however, the parents “dance” with her. Hundreds of times, day after day, they dance with her. … There are other families where the baby neither dances nor even hears the sound of any music, in these families, she does not form such secure attachments. Rather, her task – her continuous ordeal – is to learn to live with parents who are little more than strangers. Babies who live with strangers do not live well or grow well.”

Be well and, borrowing from Joyce Vance,

We’re in this together,

chuck

Categories: Author, blur, Connecting the Dots Series, Individuation, Initiation, Learning to Think and Work Symbolically
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Moving Forward

January 31, 2023

I am a little surprised about how long it has taken me to get back to making an entry here! I have enjoyed a steady stream of what promise to be juicy next offerings, only to then watch them slip away, no longer seeming to be the one I really want to work on next. A few days ago it hit me: Of course! This is the experience of being in liminal space. Recall, as formulated so well in the Stein and Stein essay: Psychotherapy, Initiation, and the Midlife Transition, liminal space is a betwixt and between, tomb and womb, has been and not yet kind of place where we are shown our depths beyond the usual, known, dominant organizing principles of who we have known ourselves to be. Separations and losses trigger this guided, archetypal, Initiatory process.

Symbolically, the process of letting go of the known identity requires one find the corpse and bury it. This then opens one’s self up to being in liminal space: many sandcastles may be constructed, only to inevitably be washed away. The challenge is to stay with this energy, practicing the art of alert reflection. Through this process, we get in touch with the bedrock of our true depths.

Letting go of 50 years of clinical practice, of doing my best to hold space for wounds to the soul, the deep emotional self, has understandably triggered a shift in my moorings. Consciously recognizing this is helpful. And yes, it is a birthing process. What might/will the latest incarnation of me/Chuck look like? We shall see.

I will soon be posting office hours available for scheduling through a link here to my Simple Practice website.

“I Am Not I” by Juan Ramon Jimenez

I am not I.

            I am this one

Walking beside me whom I do not see,

Whom at times I manage to visit,

And at other times I forget….

Categories: Author, Complexes and More, Initiation, Learning to Think and Work Symbolically, Poems, Soul
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Images of Self: Dream Time Encounters with Robert Bly

January 7, 2022

In recognition of Robert’s passing late last year, I will be posting a series of big dreams from my work with Robert and the mytho-poetic gatherings of men he inspired and fed so well. For me, these dreams helped bring me into a more conscious relationship with the Self (see Edinger on the ego-Self axis). In recognition of the Jung’s spirited and courageous engagement with the unconscious through his Black Book journals, I will also be posting some of my active imagination transcripts (AI). This is in alignment with my belief that sharing these dream + AI offerings, straight up without interpretation, has value. I would welcome the opportunity to post some of your Robert Bly dreams here. The most recent of the manifestly (as in Robert shows up as a recognizable figure) Robert Bly dreams came the week before I was to begin a six session series of Embodied Dreaming group sessions conducted by Kimberly Christensen as part of her doctoral work. Here is the dream:

Dream 10.12.19 5:47 AM Timeless Robert Bly & Flying/Arriving

“Lengthy dream sequence ended with me catching up with my wife waiting for me at an outside table at a small restaurant on the ground floor, inner courtyard space of multiple storied, huge, sophisticated department store-like building in New York, or? We had become separated working our way down from the upper floors (4th?) when I took flight, without really giving her notice, literally stepping out into space and slowly flying, exploring, descending in this huge open space, which allowed me to see vast amounts as I dropped down.

Just before, having landed in a different corner of the complex, a black, grey, slightly shadowy corner with a lovely water/nature feature by a descending stairway, I encountered a very old but exceedingly spry, slow moving man, who was walking towards me, having just come down the stairs from a balcony; he was wearing greys and light and deep purples, elegant clothing, sophisticated, timeless, wild hair barely shorn, aristocratic, and, like himself, Robert Bly, with a rock star touch of Rod Stewart; and he looked at me and had this impish smile, and we both slowly passed each other; and I said “not bad!” in a low key, trickster way of acknowledging the impact of his startling presence and his carrying something quite amazing and special. He smiled back at me; we kept walking, and then both slowly turned back for second looks, and I was thinking, ‘No, you/I didn’t need to say “It’s me, Chuck.” We both know who we are. We go way back; how delightful to find him so alive and well, so vital, here, in a cultural/business center.

As I continued up the stairs, a procession of people, all much younger, were slowly coming down the stairs. This seemed to be his group; they were breaking for lunch or something like that; they seemed bright, interested, interesting; men and women; I paused on a short section, against the railing just outside of the opening, and one woman came nearer, stopped; we looked at each other intently, softly; she was very attractive to me; her gaze held me; I sensed she was/would be a very lovely person/lover. Tracking their arrival, coming down the stairs, I put Robert with this group; he, the elder. I had the thought “Oh, this is where Robert has been spending his time; sitting with, being available to this group of next generation creative types; as in, the work goes on, even when unseen; this is where he has been working away, out of the limelight.”

Realizing this corner of the lower level was not where Karyl was, I turned to flying again and negotiated a slow, swooping crossing of the large atrium, dropping down to the ground floor of the atrium, and I spotted her at the restaurant; I walked over to her, coming up behind her, and I could see she seemed a bit upset, and I assumed it was because I had lost track of her, become separated unintentionally, in choosing to glide down/explore. The chair next to her, my place, had a beautiful, circle of large whole tomatoes and vegetable salad plate; her plate, right next to mine, was different but equally elegant; I sensed she was sad, tearful, hurt about me having my disappearance/vanishing?; I said something like “Oh, there/here you are! How lovely, and you ordered for me…as I took my seat. I was aware, and surprised, at my having avoided acknowledging her upset directly.

Before all of that, several other scenes within the same huge interior space, with lots of levels and all kinds of shops, stuff going on; I had been walking along an upper level sidewalk with a man I happened to meet, happily, a patient I felt close to in his interest in bringing his soulful life review to our meetings; we both had experienced psychotic mothers and not helpful enough fathers. We had a bit of a twinship transference going around appreciating each other’s choices in comfortable, classic clothing. His round of work was a meeting with many tears, together, over a number of years.”

I often note any waking reflections (WR) that come to me as I capture/record a dream. I didn’t record any at the time, but I remember immediately connecting with feeling delighted that such a vivid dream would show up at just such a time when I was looking for the dream I would bring to the embodied dream group experience; thinking, this is it; wow.

My next journal entry at 8:57 PM, on the same day, opens with “Time for re-entry and dialogue.” I will post this active imagination experience separate from the dream itself.

And, I must say, it is really difficult to not try to offer some additional information about the dream. In recognition of the category of dream-time-encounters-with-Self, the dream embodiment group process provided a wonderful opportunity to re-enter the moment, in the dream, when Robert and I turned back for second looks. This is the image I want to track through a number of dreams. There is also the compelling experience of how flying works for me in my dreams…

But for now, I want to get more dream material on the table.

Categories: Active Imagination, Author, Communications from the Dream Time, Dream, Images of the Self, Individuation, Initiation, Learning to Think and Work Symbolically, Soul, Waking Reflections
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Donald Kalsched: on …”When the relational environment … fails … to provide “good enough” attunement and empathic responsiveness for the growing baby”

November 9, 2021

It has been a while since I’ve posted any of my musings! Here is one more source quote with a few very important ideas and conceptualizations. Enjoy.

“Object-relations theory and interpersonal theory provide the best understanding of how trauma develops but, missing a grasp of the self-curative capacities of the psyche’s inner world, they do not adequately envision the healing of trauma that comes about through other than personal resources. The self-care system comes about as a result of acute or chronic failure by the relational environment to provide “good enough” attunement and empathic responsiveness for the growing baby. Trauma occurs when this “failure” falls outside what Winnicott calls the “area of omnipotence,” by which he means experience the baby can make sense of or “metabolize” within its own tolerance-limits or its own nascent symbolic capacity. Events that fall outside this area are “unbearable” or “unspeakable” and constitute nothing short of “madness,” by which Winnicott means literally a “breakdown” of infancy that cannot be remembered and around which the growing child (with the aid of primitive defenses) must erect a false self, like a tree growing around an absent center hollowed out by a lightning strike.

This sobering and compelling story about the effects of early trauma represents a partial truth, but it is not the whole story. There is something essential that Winnicott leaves out of his completely interpersonal metapsychology, namely, the “nonhuman environment” outwardly (Searles, 1960), and the “prehuman environment” inwardly, in other words, the archetypal layer of the psyche (Jung). The child is not just in relationship to the mother, but to the “world” beyond and the “world” within—poised, as it were, between two great, beautiful and terrible mysteries. It is the mother’s job to help mediate these Titanic realities. Without the mother’s “good enough” mediation, the child will be exposed to these inner and outer beauties/terrors and this will inevitably lead to traumatic symptoms in relationship, for example, unresolved omnipotence and grandiosity, insecure/disorganized attachment, and so forth.

But the child will not necessarily be “mad.” The Self Care System (SCS) will come to its rescue, and this system will recruit the archetypal powers of inner and outer Nature in its “effort” to save the child’s spirit – its core of health. The many myths that retell the story of children being abandoned and exposed but rescued by transpersonal powers or wild animals record the “saving” miracle by the SCS (Otto Rank). True, without an adequate human relationship to mediate “psyche and the world” the traumatized child will have life-long difficulties in intimacy with others. Born of broken attachment bonds, its SCS will not allow it to trust a process of reattachment with others for fear of retraumatization. But the self that grows around these limitations will not necessarily be a “false” self and may in fact be more creative than mad, perhaps with a rich inner world, a privileged access to “non-ordinary reality,” a deep cultural life, and a huge passion for a capacity for life. In the language of Jerome Bernstein, these individuals will occupy a “Borderland” between the worlds rather than be “Borderline” personality disorders (Bernstein, 2005).”

“Working with Trauma in Analysis,” by Donald E. Kalsched, PP. 281-295, from Jungian Psychoanalysis: Working In The Spirit of C.G. Jung, Edited by Murray Stein

Categories: Complexes and More, Connecting the Dots Series, Individuation, Initiation, Learning to Think and Work Symbolically
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Waking Reflections on the Great Fish, Loss of Identity, and Meeting the Father of the River Dream

March 23, 2021

Comment: Here are my waking reflections (WR) recorded when I woke up after the dream posted just below (see Close Encounters of the Dream Kind: Battling the Leviathan and Meeting the Father of the River). My practice in recording dreams when I wake up with one is to find a low light space and just begin writing as fast as I can in order to capture as much of the detail, energy and flow as possible. I care about being able to read what I’ve written later(!), but try not to worry about punctuation or spelling at all; I just keep writing and try to record everything that comes into my head, in the timing it comes. I am recalling I believe Jeffrey Raff’s description of Jung recommending this fast writing as a way to support greater access to these communications from the dream time. This is as if a spontaneous active imagination experience, as the ego is involved in sorting and making sense of this somewhat altered state.

Waking Reflections: when I first sat down to write, I was struck with the question of what happened beneath the surface! Popping back up naked and and in a state, in a public place, was uncomfortable, but strangely secondary to the real action. I had a vague sense of apprehensiveness about the possibility this dream be alerting me to the fact the I wasn’t able to land an important fish in my life, and, I lost my identity in the process to boot… and, and, a part of me has been dazed and confused since? Questions about who was the fisher person, in the world versus anima or an inner lover figure drifted through my head. How was it that I was in the position I was in, as if perched on the little craggy island between the channels, and, alert to possibility of diving in after the rod and reel instantaneously? feeling … when it came to describing the scene with the elder who seemed to live on the riverbank, looking after the cache, the name that popped vividly directly into my head was Father of the River, He who has his station of ancient order along the banks of the wildly abundant river, where the fish are mythological Leviathans. The opposites of order and wildness felt very important. Who is this Father of the River in relationship to me, my work. My strong sense being he was/is the deep guide to all my work, the elder, the wise old man, the Father of the River, in psyche, guiding me, Chuck, in relationship to the river of life, emotion, life flow, and all the abundance in psyche, nature, and the work of becoming conscious. He understands being a part of nature and the ways that as humans we cannot control or dominant elemental energies through force.

When recording this dream, Behemoth first came to mind; in researching a bit, it seemed Leviathan would be more appropriate. For now, it seems most accurate to say it was a very large, salmon like fish. In the dream action, I was decidedly pulled under by it and experienced complete amnesia for what happened beneath the surface. *In posting this today, with regards to these initial associations, I would like to do some research about the Leviathan, to see what the spiritual and historical record can contribute; it’s always a question of time and priority.

Before sharing one more vivid association to the last scene, being invited into talk to the keeper of the cache, I want to say my next post here will be my active imagination process in search of answers to the question what happened when I was pulled under?

One more complicated association towards the end of my recording this dream was a dream and the timing of meeting Doug Von Koss while attending a week long men’s mytho-poetic gathering in the Mendocino Woodlands. After waking up about 4:30 AM with a powerful Eye fetish dream, spending an hour outside in the moon light in a round of very powerful waking dream embodiment, I had just finished a pen, ink, and watercolor picture capturing the vividness of the image, when I heard someone singing, slowly working their way down the path leading up to the lodge where I was sitting, alone, with my painting. Doug, on a mission to get a cup of tea, walked right up to me. He took one long look at me, my freshly painted image, and said “something’s happened.” He then invited me to find a time later to tell him all about it. And, to my surprise, suggested if I would like him to paint it on my forehead on the day of the planned major ritual, this was something he could do for me. This was very much like the river elder inviting me into his realm to hear my story. He then also invited me to join his small group of men who would be offering the morning wake up chant for each of the cabins. This ritual became an important part of my waking to world each. How lovely…

Categories: Author, Communications from the Dream Time, Dream, Images of the Self, Initiation, Learning to Think and Work Symbolically, Soul, Waking Reflections

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Close Encounters of the Dream Kind: Battling the Leviathan and Meeting the Father of the River

March 19, 2021

Author note: Keeping a dream journal is a wonderful major step to beginning to pay attention to our depth. I have been pondering posting more dreams with their active imagination (AI) dialogue transcripts for some time. In my excitement to be diving into Jung’s Black Books, see post below, and witnessing his process, and his courage, I feel compelled to post more of my own close encounters of the dream kind. While one could make the case that dreams without specific personal life context can only be lacking, the burden of connecting the dots with one’s intimate life and work is great. In the spirit of all creative processes, and embodiment, it seems dream offerings and active imagination dialogues, from/with psyche, can stand alone. Might we give them that respect? I am deeply curious about what could come out of such an (limited) engagement with you, fellow dreamers. May we experiment with bearing embodied witness together in celebration of psyche? Let the images and affects, the energies and the mysteries speak for themselves!

Dream: Encountering the Leviathan and Meeting the Father of the River

April 10, 2020 4 AM: awakened with a big dream: Bank side of powerful river within a developed almost city like park, I recognize a medical staff person, like a hospital nurse I know; she/we are comfortable and collegial, and chat briefly; I see she has a very long fishing rod and reel set up and is ready to cast out into the water upstream; I am, have been, standing on what seems to be a rocky island like outcropping, with just enough height to block one’s view of the right bank, just off the left bank where she is; I am looking upstream from my rocky perch, which is running parallel to the current, with the larger flow and deeper channel to my right. I see her hook a huge 12-16 foot long fish! It strikes and jerks her off the bank and into the water flowing through the left channel of the outcropping, and I see that she can’t hold onto the rod and reel, and in an instant, I realize if I just dive into the water from my rocky observation point I might be able to snag the rod and hold onto the fish; I do and sure enough I am just able to grab it as it goes banging, and flying by; I am now being pulled into the deep water in the channel on the right side of the island. I can’t think about how I’m going to hold onto the fish, only that I have a chance to save the gear and the catch …

For a brief moment, I am being pulled under towards the opposite shore; I feel strong and hopeful, not worried about drowning, but really, just totally engaged, and then … poof, it’s over and I am crawling out of the river, naked, somewhat disoriented, and I have no idea what happened to the fish, the gear, my clothes. I am looking around trying to orient myself to the bank, others, only slightly distracted by the fact of my nakedness; I see her, stunned, and throw up my arms as if to say “wow!” Then I became aware of the loss of my wallet and everything else usually in my pockets, ID, credit cards, phone, and begin to want to find something to put it on and find out what happened to my clothes. Did anyone see the action? See what happened? I seem to be amazing or a problem for some who are just trying to do there usual daily business. I see what seems to be a group of wait staff setting up a buffet honoring dinner with well-dressed people being seated in a riverside hall like garden area. I am/feel way out way out of sync with this group!

Then I find myself on the opposite side of the river, along the deep channel, walking downstream, south along the east river bank and I discover a hidden from view storage area, with closets, clothes rods, and a cache of well preserved, boiled wool and other heavy duty fishing/fishing boat, navy surplus type gear and I feel hopeful “this is where my stuff will show up, in salvage.” I am taking a close look when a ruggedly dressed-for-the-elements, ancient mariner type man confronts me with what am I doing here? While initially stern and guarded/protective, I get his attention and he directs me to step into a nearby place to talk; I start with pouring out my recounting of what happened, how I found myself, there, just now… about the amazing fish, like the ones known to be in this river… I remembered having seen others this big; I sense he knows everything about this river, this station along the banks of this river; he will be the key… I woke up. It was 4 AM.

Waking reflections: In honoring the dream itself, I am holding back on my reflections for this post for now.

I will follow this dream up with my active imagination process dedicated to trying to find out what did happen when I was pulled under?

Categories: Active Imagination, Author, Communications from the Dream Time, Dream, Images of the Self, Initiation, Learning to Think and Work Symbolically, Soul

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Getting Started

September 1, 2020

How might we frame our depth work process approach?

Let’s open with an observation from Rumi:

“A night full of talking that hurts,
my worst held-back secrets. Everything
has to do with loving and not loving.
This night will pass.
Then we have work to do.”  Rumi poem translated by Coleman Barks

Orienting to my wordpress layout: In terms of how this blog offering works, note that if you click on an activated link, the link will take you either to the internet source, or quite often, to another one of my posts here. My pages are fixed and reserved for core components of the symbol system. The posts are listed below the pages, with the most recent on top. Below the posts are my selected Source quotes, which are simply posts consisting of direct quotes without much comment from me. When you click on any page, you go there; hit the back button to return to prior page, or, just return to the website to see the top page layout. The search function is helpful if you have a key word, such as “micro” as in micro-fracture, or partial as in partial cure; you can pull up a few postings on the theme and see which may be the best way into the conversation.

Back to Rumi: In this case, the observation from the Rumi poem is the opening of a post from me about this work. Please take a minute to go there and consider following up with the additional embedded links, to begin to orient to my processing focus.

Managing our power struggles: The immediate priority from my perspective is to consider that the ways we have been getting triggered and pulled into emotional conflicts are all part of our co-created system dedicated to enabling each other to try to maintain order and comfort when really something else is emerging. The concept of the blur, and the perspective healing only occurs in the blur is central to understanding the emotional charge in triggers here, and the importance of getting triggered.

We want to consider the possibility our hard work and dedication may be paying off, and as a reward, psyche is now offering an initiatory process which sets the ego up to be sacrificed. This is quite different from getting an unsolicited robo-call offering x-nights of free lodging at an exotic resort!

We are called to consider the meaning and impact of the possibility everything that has ever happened to us is entirely conscious now, but not to the ego…

Jung’s concept of the ego-Self Axis is crucial to understanding the mid-life transition as an initiatory process. As Stein and Stein note in their excellent overview, what is needed is the art and science of maieutics – midwifery. It is a birth process: symbolically the ego must suffer a kind of death, in the service of a rebirth, enabling a new working relationship with what Jung called the Self, the deep center of conscious and unconscious life.

Really, what this is about, is a return to discovering and then re-connecting to our lost selves.

For this opening and true coming home to occur requires that we let down the very defenses that enabled us to survive our unique challenges. This means wrestling with our core character defenses. This is the partial cure problem. As children we find work arounds, but ultimately, these dissociation based defenses enable a core disconnect, which works against living life fully.

We can try to think about the idea that psyche, in psyche’s wisdom, has chosen a beloved who is sensitive and strong enough in just the right ways, to help us break down our defenses. Once we put them in place to help us become our true authentic selves, we fight like crazy to resist their best efforts. If we succeed in thwarting their sacred mission – which we unconsciously assigned them to take on in our behalf – there will be no wedding! The story reference here is we will not be able to achieve true self-other emotional intimacy until we recover our own.

For today, please take a close look at the partial cure link.

Categories: Author, Connecting the Dots Series, Initiation, Learning to Think and Work Symbolically, Poems

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Initiation Dream Series: Healing Splits, Flying, Swimming, & Singing Dawn Songs

September 28, 2019

The following dream is the first of three I want to interpret as a series at some point. The second in the series, the Three Crones Receive the Knife dream posted below, jumped into getting posted first because I was discussing the issue of how/why encapsulated trauma requires special handling, eg: piercing prior to working through. I will be posting the third and writing about how dreams can anticipate or foreshadow future developments.

This one opens with a seminar discussion in which I am concerned with how best to describe the conditions conducive to healing splits. I then have this experience which I would describe as reflective of Borderland Consciousness as formulated by Jerome Bernstein.

11-23-12 Friday AM (after Thanksgiving Gathering): I’m at a conference/seminar/training of some kind, coastal, sprawled out hotel/campus like, with descending levels, when moving from north to south, along the beach to the immediate west. A woman presenter, analyst type, is discussing a case, and makes a conclusion. It is about a young man with a split problem of some kind; I want to carry the dialogue further, as in my mind I picture asking the group to reflect on what each person senses is the essence of what will help heal this state/condition? What would each of us say about our way into this scenario? After weighing the possibility of engaging the presenter and suggesting such an exercise, I decided not to break into the real time possibility, rather I spontaneously pictured asking the group and then, in my turn, offering the vivid, clear guidance which came to me, something like: all that is required is that one who has the experience of both (parts of the split), to be the split, to be in the split, and to be whole, also; that one, that one, in simply being present, creates the container, the energetic field, for the other, the split one, to begin to orient to what is all around, inner/outer, and the wholeness begins to flow in, and where there was/were split(s), the tension goes out, dissipates, and there is first then the bridge between all facets, and then the filling in, and now oneness in diversity. Something like that.

Then, I was separate from the group, making my way from one end of the campus to the other, mostly inside, as if long multi-level hotel, and working down, south, with the ocean to my right, and I started to realize I could fly/lift off/hover my way in negotiating a narrow staircase, and that I like to do this; this took the form of a certain feeling I get when trying this in dreams; I concentrate, and sort of begin by intentionally, when I can feel it, slowly lifting my feet off the ground, and find, yes, I can hang, free from gravity, suspended for a moment, and establishing my feeling of connection to the air and my ability to float/fly, I can then begin to slowly, in this instance, steer/guide myself, through arm gesturing, guiding up, over, back and forth, around and down. I begin to do this with awareness of others possibly taking notice – it is very striking in its quietness and impossibility – but let that go, the issue of calling attention to myself with risk for distracting my process, as I was primarily concentrating intensely on the descent through the narrow staircase, a bit spirally, and was noticing how I thought I should be falling, but instead, I had to work at dropping; pulling with my arms, twisting my body a bit, slowly, quite slowly, with patience and total focus, winding my way down the channel; after this I decided to continue with the flying/hovering, and move up and over a wall, which was open at the top, to the next room/hall over; I was concentrating intensely; effort-full but relaxed, until finally, I was outside, standing on the street at the end of the complex, and I saw a man, one of the event organizers, watching me approach. He said “Chuck?” I said ”You are Patrick?” “Yes, yes.” He said the others had already moved through, and we will join them now for the closing; first we stop and sit at the banquet table (it seems), with evidence of the others having been there. Patrick is to my right, and another man sits down to my left, and introduces himself as “Endrick.” I say I am Chuck. I see the remains of the feast; in front of me are my servings, a number of tasty looking morsels, including a miniature hamburger like roll/ food bite, with a purple berry like “patty” filling. We look at each other; and I say to them “This is a little like the wizard of Oz, when we’re back, and I recognize the two of you from our long journey….” I woke up feeling very amazed and thinking “Endrick?”.

Waking reflections and dreaming the dream onward: When I woke up the owls were calling; I thought about the long sequence and realized it was an interesting and important dream to record right then. I got up, put on my robe and slippers and headed downstairs to I grab my journal; I decided to pass on turning on any lights and keep going down to the daylight basement level and use my newly installed Walter Pelton Bender memorial bathroom to move my bowels. I liked the idea I could turn on the wall heater and relax with the images. I turned on the overhead light on super low and listened to the owls; thought about the fun yesterday, and how much I enjoyed the family, my grand kids, and everyone; as my attention turned to the dream “flying” sequence, I was struck with how those sensations mimicked a salmon negotiating a narrow stream passage; the way I was as if floating, seemed practically identical with swimming, pulling my self through the waters in my descent on the stairway, a carefully negotiated hard work effort, almost in slow motion, that worked. It took the time and concentration it took. I thought about the salmon dream last week; and all the others, and thought about all of this as from view of recognizing a deep initiation into connecting with the salmon peoples, and this dream as contributing to my understanding of this ancient connection, awareness now accomplished at some breakthrough level, and wept with gratitude and wonderful feeling of more wholeness; then I walked outside and approached the trail in the direction of the owls.

They sounded right overhead, with one to my left, one ahead, and one a bit away to my right. I stood quietly, listening, and then moved slowly ahead; I crouched down, doing what I could to get into an owl-like position; the owl to my left flew ahead, above the tree tops, and landed on the very top of a tree within my direct line of site. I thought “this is their dawn song.” I quietly began to call back, joining into their call/response song. The other close in owl flew ahead, and landed in a nearby treetop, also now revealed to me from where I was crouching. I could see both moving as they called back and forth, we, with the third calling from a bit farther south, out of my view. I guess I made the fourth. This went on for a few minutes before the two closest, one and then the other, flew back towards what I imagined to be their nest at the back of our acreage in a very large Douglas Fir tree. By now it was about 7 AM. I recognized this was their dawn song, and I was blessed too be able to sing with them this morning. I slowly walked in the direction of the back acreage and found myself in a spontaneous prayer: thank you brothers…thank you sisters…from nature, to nature, in nature…thank you.

Curiously, along with several other associations to Endrick, when I tried Googling the name Endrick, I found references to Endrick Water, or the River Endrick, a river which flows into the eastern end of Loch Lomond, Scotland. I enjoyed the association I was connecting with an ancient salmon run. On this note, “Magic Words“, a Netsilik Eskimo Poem comes to mind.

Categories: Author, Communications from the Dream Time, Complexes and More, Connecting the Dots Series, Conscious Enactment, Dream, Initiation, Learning to Think and Work Symbolically, Soul
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