Malcolm works intensively as a Jungian Analyst with a range of quite traumatised people. They live in the borderlands between a well functioning life and psychotic spaces which have been opened up in them be early traumatic experiences. In the words of Leonard Cohen : “There is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in”. For those with the deepest crack, there is sometimes an access to a brighter light.
In this talk, Malcolm will share a number of clinical examples of work with such people where there have been deep unconscious meetings of a shamanic nature through cracks in the psyche that have opened up. This has often involved ancient shamanic objects in the consulting room, and shared dreamspaces in the night. The result has often been accessing their early trauma in a very visceral way that begins a healing process, undercutting the original trauma.
The core experience of trauma is feeling intensely alone and cut off, locked in solitary confinement. By entering fully and viscerally into their plight experientially, they begin to sense that they are no longer alone in that traumatic space. If one can experience that space together in can be truely life changing.
People who live in the borderlands often have very painful lives but their access to a deeper unconscious realm can open them to very profound and healing experiences.
