I also chose to stop labeling myself as a Jungian psychoanalyst and if I have to give myself a theoretical name my preference is as a dialogic therapist, which does not mean that I have abandoned my Jungian training, nor my earlier Freudian analysis with a training analyst from the Institute. It means that I will no longer be confined by either orientation or dogma, which returns us to the present and the long-term impact of trauma on a therapist’s life. Of one thing at least I have become increasingly sure and that is that the body in pain – whether that pain relates to psyche or soma – is a body that will feel ashamed, infantilized and even humiliated at the thought of needing help. I have discovered that the same is true of analysts who may feel even more shame at the thought of needing help, but that would be another paper in itself.
Over the years I have discovered that people who come to see me may need other types of therapy than the kind I can provide. I referred earlier to the patient who witnessed members of his family being blown up. Since boyhood he had suffered from nocturnal terrors and since boyhood he had consulted many psychiatrists and therapists who had provided him with support and increased self-knowledge but nobody had been able to subdue the nocturnal terrors. Even more surprising to me was that no professional – and he is now in his late forties – had recommended he try a course of EMDR. The doctor to whom I referred at the beginning of my paper had not, despite his great interest in the psyche, even heard of EMDR. On my recommendation we decided that therapy with me – although it might provoke an interesting and valuable discourse – would not extinguish these terrors, which had become hard wired into his brain. Instead, I asked him to consult Sandy Richmond who is a leading trainer in EMDR in the UK with the result that after ten sessions with her the nocturnal terrors disappeared, and after a preliminary mild depression he experienced an almost cosmic release of psychic energy and the man then returned to therapy with me to continue on his path of individuation.