Only the wounded physician heals.
Research continues to indicate a connection between the choice of psychotherapy as a profession and one’s own woundedness. Mander (2004) concluded that the wish to help was rooted in an experience of suffering and Barnett’s (2007) interviews pointed to early emotional losses. Not surprisingly then, the concept of the ‘wounded healer’ has become a particularly popular notion so that its use occurs across a range of strikingly diverse modalities including humanist psychology, transcultural psychiatry and psychodynamic psychotherapy.
In the Jungian tradition, the shaman is seen as the archetypal wounded healer, par excellence, because they turn states of derangement into a self-cure upon which hinges their role as healers for their socio-cultural others. Little is written, however, to specify the zone of wounding which underpins the most effective wounded healer.
Through analysing the case studies, interview data, participant observation and ethnographic records of the expedition by the American Museum of Natural History into Siberia in 1900, a model emerges of the psychological construction of those who feel ‘called’ to be shamanic healers.
The model highlights ruptures in the early mother-infant relationship and as such enables us to understand the archetypal underpinning of the modern wounded healer.
