Healing Within the Blur

Here is a source quote from Jung, with a comment from me, on the importance of recognizing it is the dissociation itself that needs healing. Given the early conditions…glint in the eye of our parents, fetus, infant, toddler and on up, it is the nature of the situation that we will all have a number of unbearable split off episodic memory based encapsulated trauma complexes. Each of these, at the time, required the activation of psyche’s super power – dissociation – to survive. While life preserving at the time and into the mid-life, these dissociation based defenses do not allow vulnerability and emotional intimacy. Before we can heal we have to first “cure the cure” ie: let go of the dissociation based defenses, before we can get to the healing of the original overwhelm. Blur states, getting triggered that is, provide the energy to eventually pierce the encapsulated trauma complex, allowing us then more conscious access. See what you think about Jung’s take here:

“. . . the trauma is either a single, definite, violent impact, or a complex of ideas and emotions which may be likened to a psychic wound. Everything that touches this complex, however slightly, excites a vehement reaction, a regular emotional explosion. Hence one could easily represent the trauma as a complex with a high emotional charge, and because this enormously effective charge seems at first sight to be the pathological cause of the disturbance, one can accordingly postulate a therapy whose aim is the complete release of this charge. Such a view is both simple and logical, and it is in apparent agreement with the fact that abreaction, i.e., the dramatic rehearsal of the traumatic moment, it’s emotional recapitulation in the waking or in the hypnotic state – often has a therapeutic effect. We all know that a man has a compelling need to recount a vivid experience again and again until it has lost its affective value. As the proverb says, “What filleth the heart goeth out by the mouth.” The unbosoming gradually depotentiates the affectivity of the traumatic experience until it no longer has a disturbing influence.”

We recognize, Jung on McDougall, however that “the essential factor is the dissociation of the psyche and not the existence of a highly charged affect and, consequently, that the main therapeutic problem is not abreaction but how to integrate the dissociation. . . .that a traumatic complex brings about dissociation of the psyche. The complex is not under the control of the will and for this reason it possesses the quality of psychic autonomy. . . .it pounces on him like an enemy or a wild animal…” “Abreaction then is an attempt to reintegrate the autonomous complex, to incorporate it gradually into the conscious mind as an accepted content, by living the traumatic situation over again, once or repeatedly,” (pp. 130-132, CW16)