Time and Trauma in Analytical Psychology and Psychotherapy

Book excerpt: This book explores the experience of time in psychoanalysis and Andean shamanism. It plots ways to work through unresolved trauma by expanding how we conceptualize both implicit and nonverbal atemporal experience, drawing from the rituals, narratives, and medicine of Andean shamans and quantum theory. Shifting between subjective states in time is fundamental in trauma work and psychoanalysis. Integrating traumatic experiences that have become split off and held in “timeless” unconscious states of implicit memory is an essential aspect of psychic healing. Becoming familiar with the Andean shamans’ understanding of atemporal experience, as well as learning about their ways of “grounding” the experience consciously, can offer a route through which psychoanalysis and therapy may deepen the therapeutic process and open new states of consciousness. Theories developed in quantum physics are included to parallel the shamans’ experience and for describing the analytic process. Written by a noted expert in this field, this insightful volume will interest trainee and practitioner analytical psychologists, as well as any professional interested in the resolution of trauma within a psychotherapeutic setting.