A shamanic dimension to my analytic work is an area of experience I have not sought out, but which has found me. It has found me without any recourse to psychedelic drugs or any conscious expectation. I feel like an innocent bystander, where the collective unconscious snook up on me unawares, not as a frontal assault but taking a path that the unconscious, in its purest form, seems often to take, in percolating up from the depths and gradually making its presence felt, unbeknown to the recipient.
The context for this has been ancient shamanic art. I grew up in a family where any form of culture was conspicuous by its absence – no books, no pictures, no music. It was a cultural desert. I was a blank canvas. Then out of the blue I was introduced to ancient art. Some pieces found a home in my consulting room which, in hindsight, had a shamanic connection to ancient civilisations. They had a strange power of their own, imposing themselves on my room, my life, and my patients. I would like to trace the journey of living with this art, and its impact, connecting me to a world of collective phenomena that has transformed my view of time and space. This has been a very moving experience.
I would like to give a series of clinical examples of how ancient art dovetailed with analytic practice, to bring about striking change, often with very traumatised patients. With such patients there is a raw connection to the various layers of the collective unconscious.
I’m reminded of 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.
I would like to set this in context and talk about a shamanic view of the world, which seems to have emerged right across the continents, thousands of years ago. I will do this with particular reference to South and Meso America, the cultures with which I am most familiar. The shaman is normally a damaged individual who crossed boundaries of space and time, who accessed the collective unconscious, containing individuals and communities.
I would also like to explore Jung’s work on this theme, and also the work of Stanislav Grof, who brought together analysis and the use of psychodelics and holotropic breathing, as ways of bringing healing to deeply traumatised patients.
Programme:
Seminar 1 | September 24
Part one– reflections on the Francis Bacon exhibition at the Royal Academy – “Man and Beast” – looking at Bacon’s access to, and the power of, the “animal/visceral” in his own unconscious and the roots of this in his early life. Then suggesting some reasons why “Animal Familiars” may have grown up in shamanic practice throughout the world as a conduit to powerful unconscious processes.
Part two – relating this to Peruvian shamanism and some personal experiences in my analytic practice.
Seminar 2 | 29 October
Part one – reflections on the Peru exhibition at the British Museum – “A Journey in Time” – looking at the fluidity of time and space in Andean thought – the way that the present is seen to affect the past (very different from a western linear view of time where the past affects the present affects the future).
Part two – relating this to my analytic practice and the way the experience in the present in the Analytic space, affects the traumas of the past including interuterine and birth experiences.
Seminar 3 | 26 November
Part one – the work of Christopher Bache and his book “LSD and the mind of the Universe” where he charts 73 closely monitored LSD trips he took over 25 years, and the different layers of the Collective Unconscious he navigated.
Part two – Accessing a few of these layers in analytic work without recourse to drugs but not on one’s own as Bache was but in relationship with another in the analytic space.
Seminar 4 | 28 January 2023
Part one – Jung‘s ideas about shamanism, and also the work of Stanislav Grof augmenting analysis with mind altering drugs.
Part two – Windows into working in this way as a part of normal analytic practice but…. without any additives.