Somewhere between Freud and Jung . . .

Somewhere between Freud and Jung lies the truth. Although I entered graduate school with a penchant for Jung, I grew to appreciate Freud as I trained in psychotherapy with children, adolescents and adults. In working with children in the non-directive medium of play therapy, I observed the truths of Freud. And I came to appreciate the child in the adult interfering with adult happiness.

Freud revealed how the obstacles to fulfillment in love and work stem from our childhood psyche. His psychology was based in our body and its biology. He helped us make sense of our sexual proclivities in bed and showed us the source of our perversions. He based his findings in the universality of the body. Quoting Napoleon’s “anatomy is destiny,” Freud described how a boy’s development differs from a girl’s.

Jung showed us the universal elements of mythology. He helped us see what the soul has in common despite differences in culture and differences in the time period in which we’re born. The soul’s striving is the same. Nonetheless, we are body and soul, spirit and matter, and as a soul inhabiting a human body, we must take into account both sides of our nature in helping our soul find its freedom to love and to find fulfillment in life.

David Hart’s compassionate listening helped my soul to evolve. Looking back, I can see he took me as far as he could; he had his limits imposed by his adherence to Jung’s theory and by where his soul was in its evolution when he saw me. However, in dreams following my analysis, his mere listening presence, and not profound interpretations, allowed me to access repressed pain. The pain I’d blocked out had hampered my happiness as an adult.

There are two things that David Hart said to me before I set off for graduate school. He said, “Don’t get so caught up in your patients’ growth that you forget your own.” He told me about sitting in Jung’s parlor with the other candidates in training. Jung cautioned them, “Learn your theories well and then forget them when you are in the presence of the miracle of the living soul.”

As I present some of my most unusual cases, you will see how words spoken soul to soul and heart to heart become the flesh of healing. After all, Freud and Jung had come up with the talking cure. My own analysis and my study of various depth psychologies as well as my own clinical experience had revealed to me the healing power of words.

Nevertheless, it was in my own practice that I discovered how the words of acceptance, compassion, and empathy can become the flesh of healing. The penetrating power of insightful words could help a fragmented person become whole.

Philip, one of my teenage patients started his session one day by telling me: “They told us that life is a conversation.”

“Absolutely,” I said. He was quoting the trainers from the weekend workshop he attended. It was given by what was called the Forum: a late 1980’s version of what was first called est.
Life is not about the events that befall us but is about the inner conversation we have about what happens around us. However, from my clinical experience, I realize there is a conscious conversation and an unconscious one. It was the unconscious one, composed of repressed emotions, that did the most damage.

In the recently released book The Body never Lies, Alice Miller uses the lives of famous people—writers, artists, dictators—to demonstrate the devastating effect of repressed emotional pain. In example after example, she reveals how repressed and denied childhood suffering can lead to illness, disease, and premature death.


It was in a small New England town that people sought me out for therapy to relieve their suffering and, in a sense, their persecution. New England is the land where the Puritans sought relief from their religious persecution. It is also where Hawthorne and Melville delved into the dark depths of the human heart. After my time there, I discovered what darkness and suffering are hidden behind the facade of those black-shuttered, white-clapboard homes.

In the next blog posting, you'll meet Jennifer: a woman who desperately wanted to get pregnant. She taught me most poignantly about the body’s response to the repression of intense emotions. Jennifer showed me how words hidden in the unconscious, the dark depths of the heart, can become flesh of an empty womb. . . .

• Today, consider the power of the words that you think and speak can have on your health and the health of othrs. Such common thougts as "this situation is EATING ME Up INSIDE" have an immediate physioligical impact on your body. Your body and nervous systmecontract, your breath may become shallow and rapid, jaw clenches, and your heart rate may elevate as well as your blood pressure. Over time such repetitive patterns of thought may show up in stomach/digestive problems. when this happens the words hidden in the symptom is "I can't stomach this!"