The Case for Jungian Psychotherapy

“The acceptance of oneself is the essence of the whole moral problem and the epitome of a whole outlook on life. That I feed the hungry, that I forgive an insult, that I love my enemy in the name of Christ -- all these are undoubtedly great virtues. What I do unto the least of my brethren, that I do unto Christ. But what if I should discover that the least among them all, the poorest of all the beggars, the most impudent of all the offenders, the very enemy himself -- that these are within me, and that I myself stand in need of the alms of my own kindness -- that I myself am the enemy who must be loved -- what then? As a rule, the Christian's attitude is then reversed; there is no longer any question of love or long-suffering; we say to the brother within us "Raca," and condemn and rage against ourselves. We hide it from the world; we refuse to admit ever having met this least among the lowly in ourselves.” ― C.G. Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections

In memory of John Romig Johnson, PhD (Jungian Analyst)

30 June 2019

This essay is a tribute to an incredible psychotherapist who saved my life. It is also a tribute to the power of a very particular form of Jungian psychotherapy , which as I was to find out, holds underestimated power to heal the psyche. In addition, this is a tribute to all the men and women who honoured me with their stories and their sacred trust.

In the Spring of 2010, I was in Afghanistan, serving as a military psychologist for the United States Marine Corp. I had been based out of the USMC’s Camp Leatherneck and the United Kingdom’s Role 3 hospital on Camp Bastian in the Helmand Province of Afghanistan. My primary job at the time was to evaluate injured Marines who had suffered cognitive and psychological injuries during combat operations. The job itself was rather straightforward. Unfortunately, I was not prepared for the experience of doing my job in the middle of war.

When you boil down my story, it’s about a psychologist who cracked-up under the unspeakable heartbreak of war, and who found a path back to some semblance of sanity and wholeness. That’s the thing about being in the middle of a war, for some people, it rips apart the mind which is trying desperately to hold-fast to some sort of cohesion in the midst of what appears to be utter senselessness, pain, and chaos.

My personal search for healing took me through many unsuccessful and frustrating experiences with the mental health system as it is in the United States. I’d tried all the ‘evidence-based’ forms of psychotherapy and all the different psychopharmacological drugs without much relief. Eventually, out of desperation and exhaustion, I paid out-of-pocket for twice-weekly sessions of Jungian Analysis with a fellow psychologist named John Romig Johnson. The relationship and bond we formed were transformative and a testament to the power of psychotherapy, when done well.

I already was functioning with some low level of anxiety and depression even before I joined the Navy in 2007. Graduate school was difficult, and my first son had been diagnosed with Autism in 2006.

It is never easy for a psychologist to seek out help for ‘psychological problems’ and a rising feeling of shame compounded as treatment after treatment failed to help me overcome my ‘problems’. At some point, it would have been late 2014, I had been diagnosed with chronic Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder by more than one professional, and I had been on almost every type of psychiatric medication to mute the worst of my symptoms. I’d tried CPT, PE, EMDR, and a few other courses of the different brand name ‘proven’ therapies for PTSD.

My experiences living with PTSD were clichés from every movie and story you’d likely read or heard about in the mass media. Living at a campground in a small tent for months on end while consuming enough alcohol just to sleep without nightmares were a reality for me. I lived it every day for years. I lived with unprovoked rage, extreme avoidance, panic, memories that visited me unannounced like living phantoms, memory difficulties, depression, self-loathing, vivid night terrors that left me urinating on myself as I slept, and this odd sense that time itself as become disjointed. Overall of that was a sense that in some way my soul was in different places and in different times.

My mind had become a whirling cyclone with a vortex centred on the cries and images of a local Afghani girl badly burnt, but still alive, being rushed into the trauma centre by a British nurse. And, the damnedest thing is I knew as a psychologist exactly why this particular experience had caused such a devastating impact on me. I knew logically and rationally why it broke me because a week before this incident, I had received the news that while I was deployed in Afghanistan, my family had experienced a home invasion. My wife and children were not harmed during the robbery, but I had been primed because my wife and children were terrified and I was powerless to help them. I’d also been primed by the numerous casualties and death I saw every day for weeks on end. This was just the beginning of a rapid downward spiral.

The additional problem was my military career was tailspin and my family life was hanging by a thread. What were the sources of greatest support to me had also become, paradoxically, the sources of increasing stress? At work, I absorbed more trauma day after day as I treated service members for their own PTSD symptoms and at home, I became more and more emotionally distant for fear of contaminating my family with my own rage, pain, and anguish.

Entering Jungian Psychoanalysis was completely odd compared to any form of psychotherapy I’d tried in my years of being a client of psychotherapy. I found John randomly through a web search and I called him up after weeks of stalling and avoiding that awkward ‘start’ of psychotherapy. John was in his eighties at the time we started working together. He was old-school in the best way possible. It helped that he was a priest on top of being a Jungian psychoanalyst. And I did my research on him. He’d trained under Jung, and the students of the first generation, in Zurich. John had gone to Yale and supervised analysts.

The bottom-line for me was that he knew his craft very well and was completely cut off from the military system. For the first time in my life, this course of psychotherapy was between me and my therapist without any insurance or military oversight. The first words John ever said to me as we began our sessions was, ‘Where is your soul today?”. The question left me dumbfounded and at a loss but that simple question planted a seed that would grow and bear fruit in the years to come.

I’ve often wondered why I chose classic Jungian psychoanalysis. I’d read Jung as an undergrad, of course, and I’d even dabbled in some more extensive readings in graduate school. If I am completely honest, I didn’t have a clue most of the time what Jung was talking about in his books. What I could gather was that Jung discovered a richness and depth in his struggles to unravel the mysteries of the human psyche that leave our mainstream psychological theories of suffering looking stale and lifeless by comparison. As the years of my analysis went on, my symptoms first altered and then transformed. I am no longer suffering from am unendurably painful psychological wound and the depth of change I’ve experienced is simply profound. So, as a psychologist, I wanted to outline what I’ve learned about psychoanalysis and why it is still relevant today for our current lives.

1. The unconscious is very real and it does hold a central key to understanding ourselves and our lives at a much deeper level. Dreams are far from meaningless noise, rather they contain a wealth of vital information. The unconscious has the ability to reveal things about ourselves that would otherwise remain inaccessible. We are blind to much of our inner needs and drives. Remaining hyper-rational and ego-focused robs us of a richness to our lives that is desperately needed.

2. People in psychological distress require both meaning and a sense of mission or purpose. They must find a way to deeply understand the source of their psychological pain. The psychological meaning for our lives requires us to discover some sort of map of our inner worlds by which we find and orient ourselves. We have abdicated much of our professional attention away from the inner experience outside of ‘self-talk’, but the dreams and images of our inner world hold for us a treasure trove of meaning and a sense of place in the world. These experiences of the inner world are just as empirically valid as any linguistically based cognition.

3. Psychotherapy takes a long time. It requires years of investment in building a psychotherapeutic relationship that has a true and lasting healing value for the patient. Every person is different, and the source of distress may be mitigated rapidly for some people if the goal is to simply elevate a transient symptom. Sadly, for many people, we need to not only elevate the symptom but also help to heal the deeper wounds that caused the symptoms in the first place. Motrin is great from a sprained ankle, but it’s not going to do much for a broken femur.

4. Jung spent a great deal of his efforts, as he detailed in his prolific writing, explaining the rich source of value in the healing arts that our ancestors practised across the globe. We should not be so quick to toss aside the aeons of accumulated knowledge of the human psyche contained within the myths and religions of the world. Those who follow in Jung’s footsteps today are carrying forward this effort and continue to refine Jung’s methods. I understand how Jung became marginalized. He was far from a perfect man, but what counts in the end is that he developed a form of psychotherapy that is impactful, elevates psychological suffering, and enriches the lives of those who desperately need it. I would advocate for the world of Jungian Analysis to expand out of its rather cloistered havens. I can foresee a path for training in Jungian psychotherapy to be more open and available for a much broader population.

5. Much of what Jung taught and advocated for can be integrated and expanded upon. His methods of training psychotherapists should be the standard for anyone practising psychotherapy today. He was very much ahead of his time in this regard. Jungian Analysis has a bedrock foundation in the world’s myths and religions. Despite Jung’s antiquated and difficult language, Jung’s methods have the capacity to broaden psychotherapy’s ability to work across cultures.

6. People should have the choice to elect to seek treatment from psychoanalysts and psychoanalytic psychotherapists. They should also have the right to undergo long-term treatment with a psychotherapist that is covered by the military and private health insurance plans. Psychoanalytic treatments have proven their worth over time and with published empirical studies.

Today, I am happy to report that many of symptoms have become less of a burden, and overall I am a much more content man. I have many better days than bad ones, and those bad ones are never as bad as they had been. I left the military on a high note a year ago after creating a Jungian-based suicide intervention that saved numerous lives. I am a much better psychologist and healer than I’ve ever been. I’m a better dad and husband, in spite of hardships.

I still have bad days, and there were more of them after John died unexpectedly in February of this year and I grieved deeply at his loss. John helped me to heal a deep wound by finding the means of healing within myself, and between us, as doctor and patient. John and C.G. Jung taught me the truest forms of self-compassion, meaning, and the motivation to keep doing a little bit better every day.