Shamanism & Humaniversity (Part 3)
3 - The meeting of shamanism and western psychology : Psychoshamanism
Jean-Jacques Dubois, a canadian psychotherapist and author of many books on the subjects of anthropology, philosophy, psychology and shamanism, developped an approach that aims to integrate shamanism and psychology, an approach he calls « psychoshamanism ». His model, that I will desbribe in the coming pages, will serve as a base on which shamanism and Humaniversity psychology will be integrated.
According to Dubois, a shamanistic society owns an animist thought structure linking a divinity or a spirit to each aspect of nature. Each human being is seen as not only possessing a body but also a spirit (a soul), or even many. It is with this soul or spirit that the shaman can travel to the other world – the invisible world – to help solve the problem of the individual or of his social group. For example, he can travel to the other world to get back the soul of a sick patient as it is conceived that he is lost, or even captured by divinities and brought there in their underworld. The bewitchment (possession) can then become the focus of his understanding of psychic or physical illnesses. Exorcism and adorcism can now become important psychological tools in his handyman toolbox.
Psychoshamanism uses moderns tools (psychoanalysis, psychogenealogy, etc...) as much as traditional tools such as shamanism, Christian mysticism and the art of healing like magnetism. The art of various healers is to bring back health by canalizing curative energy, normally by imposing hand on the patient (known as Reiki) or simply by helping the patient express repressed emotions and ideas and help him/her make sense out of it. This energy is apparently present in all human beings, from birth to death. This vital strength not only keeps us healthy but it can also bring health back when we are sick or injured. This art of healing is one of the most ancient form of medicine used to cure various infections and illnesses.
3.1.1 - Healing the human being in its totality
In the psychoshamanistic therapy, the human being is seen as a unity that cannot be split, body, soul and mind. He also cannot be conceived apart from his family and social unit, from his ethnical background, from the rest of the world. More over, he is impregnated with his ancestral background and is part of the history and evolution of humanity, (past, present and future). He is then confined to the genetic laws of development (human growth, evolution) that systemic theories of disorder and complexity reveals to us.
Influences and innovations : As mentionned before, the psychoshamanism approach uses as much modernity tools and concepts than traditional ones. A therapy based on intuition, it draws on knowledge rooted in anthropology, psychoanalysis, psychology and psychogenealogy. It relies on the shamanic vision of sickness and healing, on the art of the healer and his practice of magnetism (curative energy), on mystical western traditions, on original exercises of pain relief (exorcism), on reclaiming of identity (adorcism) and vizualisation. It is a new and original therapeutic conceptualization, even revolutionary according to Dubois. However, the author states that it is also simply a modern western actual version of the antique shamanic conceptualization of sickness and healing (psychic and physical).
Transgression for complexity :
According to Dubois, to heal oneself, the shaman had to transgress his values, his family, his ancestors, his society in its dysfonctional aspects because his traumas were connected to the disease of the global society in which he is living. To get out of the sickness cycle, he had to provoke a kind of disorder, a transgression of the society’s rules that made him sick. Later, when having to heal patients, in the same way, the shaman will have to transgress the complicated order, the personal, family and social system who bring with it the sickness of the actual patient, to bring about a new order more complexified and integrated, more harmonious so it can give back health and the blooming of the individual. Such is the psychoshamanistic approach, in which it is the patient who must gradually apply the therapy to himself, helped by the therapist.
The therapist : his quality and work.
According to Dubois, to become a good therapist, one must have had dedramatize his own pain and develop a good understanding of his defense mechanisms. Like the shaman, he is the master of the « good » and « bad » spirits. Having taken care of his own pain, he is then able to welcome and sustain the pain (the mean spirits) of his patients with openess and compassion. After having helped his patient in bringing the pain to the surface, trusting his intuition, using vizualization techniques and knowing the personal, family and transgenerationnal archetypes, he allows them to engage in a process of individualization to access to more freedom, more complexity and more love. Dubois considers that it is mostly through individual sessions that the process of freeing oneself from the pain and personal growth can take place.
Energetic Healing
« Energetic Healing is a loose term covering many different approaches, religious or secular such as spiritualism, religious sanctuaries (such as Lourdes in France) or healers with bare hands. A distinction is made between healing that relies on faith, resting on religious belief and the trust placed in the healer and spiritual healing in which the energy is transfered to the patient from the Divine. Beyond these subtle differences of faith and beliefs, what count the most is the quality of the communication between the healer and his patient and the receptivity, openesss and the will to get better shown by the patient ».
The basic principles of the energetic healing are :
1- Transferring energy from the therapist to the patient, either by imposing hands over the part of the body that is afflicted by the illness or to the whole body and/or by communicating and being totaly present with the patient.
2- Searching and eliminating the root causes of the physical disease or the psychic illness; these causes are repressed pains linked to unfulfilled desires or needs, to family or social constraints or interiorised constraints, (imposed from oneself to oneself), basically from a lack of love and friendship.
3- Learning self-healing.
Learning self-healing : The patient receives energy from the therapist in order to heal oneself. In the first place, the treatment allows to get rid of symptoms (pain, physical and psychological problems). The patient then learn to let go of the physical pain by activating his own self-healing mechanisms and his psychic symptoms by an upsurge of emotions and by insights of consciousness accelerated by the transfers of energy.
Learning to feel and to talk about one’s pain to free oneself from it : Therapy eliminates the root causes of the pains (trauma, painful emotions, anxiety, anguish, agressivity...) that one cannot admit to oneself and to others. So the patient has to learn to feel and tell his pain and then to let go of the psychic causes with the help of insights of consciousness facilitated by the energy he/she receives by the contact with the therapist.
The body is telling what the spirit does not dare to say : The pain is unconscious or semiconscious because it has always been repressed. It can come back later in the body through illnesses and physical pain or through mental disorders (existential crisis or social disorders). Sickness is the metaphor of this pain, because the body feels and says, through the pain, what the spirit cannot feel and say so it can get free.
Emotional Release allows to get rid of the pain : The therapeutic energy transfered from the therapist to the patient stimulates his own energetic healing system and enables him/her to overcome the symptoms. The energy allows a great physical relaxation and enables a balance of the magnetic fields. By eliminating physical tensions, the energy triggers the release of psychological resistances (defence mechanisms) that withold the deep unconscious pains. This release frees up the pain that can first be felt and then talked about, while being relieved by the energy and the emotional support of the therapist.
No more in need of pain : Now that the pain previously repressed is brought up to the surface, the patient can talk it over. From that moment on, the body won’t have to express it through pain anymore. Now that the person does not need the pain anymore, the body is liberated from it. It is the same process with psychic disorders.
The homeopathic effect : It sometimes happens that the symptoms of sickness or illness are amplified in the first stages of the process. This is what is called the homeopathic effect. The sickness is disturbed and the pain hidden in the unconscious is manifesting more intensely. This is a good sign as the new symptoms, by disappearing afterward, will bring the sickness with it .
Energy as painkiller : The energy of the therapist sooths the physical pain because it triggers a muscular and organic reduction of the pain facilitating the healing process. Very often, this soothing has some effects on the psychological level. The patient can feel sleepy or very relaxed up to 24 hours after a session. He can also feel a certain tension and anxiety. This anguish, tempered by a great relaxation provoqued by the energy, is the pain that is being liberated, this pain that was expressed so far by the physical and psychological symptoms.
The energy can eliminate only the symptoms : The therapy can eliminate the symptoms only if the sick person is not ready to dive at the root of the problem. In that case, the sickness might manifest itself sooner or later more intensely. It can also happen that the same causes, once that they cannot overflow energy, provoke another illness that is even more severe in a part of the body or in an organ that is more fragile and because that part allows the metaphoric expression of these causes.
Unconscious resistance to healing : Sometimes, the patient will unconsciously resist healing. This means that the sickness is so well integrated in the psychology and the social and family system of the patient that it plays an adaptative role in him/her. For example a physical handicap can allow someone to dominate his relatives, to justify an emotional or financial dependancy or allow the person to escape certain fears or responsabilities, or to punish himself for some guilt more or less conscious. A sickness can also be geneticaly rooted and be part of a biological heredity closely linked to a psychological family system. These difficulties can be overcome but will require more efforts and time from the patient and the therapist.
Bewitchment (or possession) by a fusional and close relationship : It happens, for children but also for adults, that the psychic and physical illnesses are manifestations of problems or a psychic dynamic repressed by a close member of the family (or a family system) with whom the patient is in close and merging relationship. The pain and emotion repressed by one of the family member or by the whole family system floods the psychich system of the other person (the patient) and/or is somatised in the body of the other. This is what is called a bewitchment or a possession, and one becomes the other, just like a mystical relationship.
Bewitchment by agressiveness, grudge and hate : It happens that a patient unconsciously interiorized a strong agresssion from someone else towards him. This agressiveness, which is a desire interiorized by the patient but belonging to the other, destroys, breaks into silence and form a distance between the spirit and the body of the patient. To cultivate a secret grudge towards someone can become a devastating violence. It’s by the archetype of bewitchment that we can understand such an influence from a distance and in silence.
A genuine bewitchment : Sometimes, the causes of an illness or a sickness can only be understood as a genuine bewitchment. This phenomena is more common in certain ethnic groups, but is found more and more in a growing number of people joining sects (satanic cults for example), or on other groups that practice positive thinking, certain meditation techniques or others who participates in Christian or other fondamentalist cults.
The energetic healing fulfills some deficiencies : The energetic healing does not replace traditional medicine. It only complements some of its weaknesses, more precisely the responsibility of the health of the patient of himself by himself.
Sicknesses and illnesses are often perceived by the therapist/shaman as symptoms of a symbolic loss of balance of the person victim of the sickness or the correspondant lack of balance of his family and/or community. It always concerns a global system. Individual sickness allows the system to survive, to be maintained, to be preserved, to survive, to adjust itself. Sicknesses makes it possible for the individual or community systems to last without transforming itself. Real and lasting healing necessarily implies a systemic transformation of the individual and of its community. This transformation always come with a conscious emergence of his repressed pain and with a liberation of this same pain.
TABLE 1 : Comparison between the shaman and the psychotherapist (Dubois, 2000)
Shaman
He moves easily in the « other world » that he knows well because he explored it in depth;
Psychotherapist
He moves easily in the unconscious part of himself and/or his patient, parts that he knows well because he studied it in depth and has explored his inner self.
Shaman
He meets « evil spirits » who creates illness and death and also meet good spirits that gives health and life.
Psychotherapist
He discovers painful emotions (pain or death instincts) that causes illness or death and also helps the patient discovers inner resources (strength or life instincts) that give health and life. His own inner exploration allows him to know the darkness and to bring it light.
Shaman
Because he is mastering the spirits, the shaman can heal psychic or physical illnesses; the good spirits replace the evil spirits.
Psychotherapist
Because he is mastering certain psychological theories and techniques, he can help the patient get rid of the psychic or physical illnesse. These theories and techniques allow the therapist to dynamize the resources of the patient to get rid of painful emotions and illnesses.
Dubois’s model is interesting because it links traditional shamanistic concepts with contemporary psychology. As we have seen, the western therapist interested in shamanistic concepts can find in this model a base for a better understanding of many apparent paranormal phenomenas that might have been previously interpreted as crazyness or neurosis. It can also deepen our knowledge and know-how of psychic or physical illnesses that could not be previously treated.
Some things became clear for me after reading Dubois’s work. First, for anyone wanting to work with people in a therapeutic context, it is essential and an absolute prerequisite to have worked extensively on oneself before working with other people. Otherwise, we will not be able to explore totally and freely painful experiments of our patient’s life as our own unfinished and incomplete issues would interfere with or be triggered by our patient’s painful life issues and might reactivate our own pain. Secondly, when working with another person seeking our help, we must take into account all the past relationships that constitute this person’s life as it is still alive and active inside of the person. In this sense, bewitchment, an important term in shamansim, can be considered as past authority figures in a person’s life that are still controlling him/her, their behaviors, thoughts patterns and/or beliefs.
So eventually, one should consider working with a systemic approach - whenever it is possible - to put an end to this possession. And the ultimate goal of therapy is to stimulate self-help in the other person, bringing him/her to take full responsibility for his/her own life. In the first steps of the therapeutic relationship, the goal is to create security and trust in the other so he/she can open up and start uncovering and sharing painful or shameful experiences from the past, to gradually make him/her more responsible for the introspective process as he/she gains confidence. And finally, it seems clear to me that it is sometimes necessary to start working from the physical pain and illnesses of our patients if we want to be able to have access to the psychological and psychic worlds as the body often reveals unconscious traumas.
Jean-Jacques Dubois, a canadian psychotherapist and author of many books on the subjects of anthropology, philosophy, psychology and shamanism, developped an approach that aims to integrate shamanism and psychology, an approach he calls « psychoshamanism ». His model, that I will desbribe in the coming pages, will serve as a base on which shamanism and Humaniversity psychology will be integrated.
According to Dubois, a shamanistic society owns an animist thought structure linking a divinity or a spirit to each aspect of nature. Each human being is seen as not only possessing a body but also a spirit (a soul), or even many. It is with this soul or spirit that the shaman can travel to the other world – the invisible world – to help solve the problem of the individual or of his social group. For example, he can travel to the other world to get back the soul of a sick patient as it is conceived that he is lost, or even captured by divinities and brought there in their underworld. The bewitchment (possession) can then become the focus of his understanding of psychic or physical illnesses. Exorcism and adorcism can now become important psychological tools in his handyman toolbox.
Psychoshamanism uses moderns tools (psychoanalysis, psychogenealogy, etc...) as much as traditional tools such as shamanism, Christian mysticism and the art of healing like magnetism. The art of various healers is to bring back health by canalizing curative energy, normally by imposing hand on the patient (known as Reiki) or simply by helping the patient express repressed emotions and ideas and help him/her make sense out of it. This energy is apparently present in all human beings, from birth to death. This vital strength not only keeps us healthy but it can also bring health back when we are sick or injured. This art of healing is one of the most ancient form of medicine used to cure various infections and illnesses.
3.1.1 - Healing the human being in its totality
In the psychoshamanistic therapy, the human being is seen as a unity that cannot be split, body, soul and mind. He also cannot be conceived apart from his family and social unit, from his ethnical background, from the rest of the world. More over, he is impregnated with his ancestral background and is part of the history and evolution of humanity, (past, present and future). He is then confined to the genetic laws of development (human growth, evolution) that systemic theories of disorder and complexity reveals to us.
Influences and innovations : As mentionned before, the psychoshamanism approach uses as much modernity tools and concepts than traditional ones. A therapy based on intuition, it draws on knowledge rooted in anthropology, psychoanalysis, psychology and psychogenealogy. It relies on the shamanic vision of sickness and healing, on the art of the healer and his practice of magnetism (curative energy), on mystical western traditions, on original exercises of pain relief (exorcism), on reclaiming of identity (adorcism) and vizualisation. It is a new and original therapeutic conceptualization, even revolutionary according to Dubois. However, the author states that it is also simply a modern western actual version of the antique shamanic conceptualization of sickness and healing (psychic and physical).
Transgression for complexity :
According to Dubois, to heal oneself, the shaman had to transgress his values, his family, his ancestors, his society in its dysfonctional aspects because his traumas were connected to the disease of the global society in which he is living. To get out of the sickness cycle, he had to provoke a kind of disorder, a transgression of the society’s rules that made him sick. Later, when having to heal patients, in the same way, the shaman will have to transgress the complicated order, the personal, family and social system who bring with it the sickness of the actual patient, to bring about a new order more complexified and integrated, more harmonious so it can give back health and the blooming of the individual. Such is the psychoshamanistic approach, in which it is the patient who must gradually apply the therapy to himself, helped by the therapist.
The therapist : his quality and work.
According to Dubois, to become a good therapist, one must have had dedramatize his own pain and develop a good understanding of his defense mechanisms. Like the shaman, he is the master of the « good » and « bad » spirits. Having taken care of his own pain, he is then able to welcome and sustain the pain (the mean spirits) of his patients with openess and compassion. After having helped his patient in bringing the pain to the surface, trusting his intuition, using vizualization techniques and knowing the personal, family and transgenerationnal archetypes, he allows them to engage in a process of individualization to access to more freedom, more complexity and more love. Dubois considers that it is mostly through individual sessions that the process of freeing oneself from the pain and personal growth can take place.
Energetic Healing
« Energetic Healing is a loose term covering many different approaches, religious or secular such as spiritualism, religious sanctuaries (such as Lourdes in France) or healers with bare hands. A distinction is made between healing that relies on faith, resting on religious belief and the trust placed in the healer and spiritual healing in which the energy is transfered to the patient from the Divine. Beyond these subtle differences of faith and beliefs, what count the most is the quality of the communication between the healer and his patient and the receptivity, openesss and the will to get better shown by the patient ».
The basic principles of the energetic healing are :
1- Transferring energy from the therapist to the patient, either by imposing hands over the part of the body that is afflicted by the illness or to the whole body and/or by communicating and being totaly present with the patient.
2- Searching and eliminating the root causes of the physical disease or the psychic illness; these causes are repressed pains linked to unfulfilled desires or needs, to family or social constraints or interiorised constraints, (imposed from oneself to oneself), basically from a lack of love and friendship.
3- Learning self-healing.
Learning self-healing : The patient receives energy from the therapist in order to heal oneself. In the first place, the treatment allows to get rid of symptoms (pain, physical and psychological problems). The patient then learn to let go of the physical pain by activating his own self-healing mechanisms and his psychic symptoms by an upsurge of emotions and by insights of consciousness accelerated by the transfers of energy.
Learning to feel and to talk about one’s pain to free oneself from it : Therapy eliminates the root causes of the pains (trauma, painful emotions, anxiety, anguish, agressivity...) that one cannot admit to oneself and to others. So the patient has to learn to feel and tell his pain and then to let go of the psychic causes with the help of insights of consciousness facilitated by the energy he/she receives by the contact with the therapist.
The body is telling what the spirit does not dare to say : The pain is unconscious or semiconscious because it has always been repressed. It can come back later in the body through illnesses and physical pain or through mental disorders (existential crisis or social disorders). Sickness is the metaphor of this pain, because the body feels and says, through the pain, what the spirit cannot feel and say so it can get free.
Emotional Release allows to get rid of the pain : The therapeutic energy transfered from the therapist to the patient stimulates his own energetic healing system and enables him/her to overcome the symptoms. The energy allows a great physical relaxation and enables a balance of the magnetic fields. By eliminating physical tensions, the energy triggers the release of psychological resistances (defence mechanisms) that withold the deep unconscious pains. This release frees up the pain that can first be felt and then talked about, while being relieved by the energy and the emotional support of the therapist.
No more in need of pain : Now that the pain previously repressed is brought up to the surface, the patient can talk it over. From that moment on, the body won’t have to express it through pain anymore. Now that the person does not need the pain anymore, the body is liberated from it. It is the same process with psychic disorders.
The homeopathic effect : It sometimes happens that the symptoms of sickness or illness are amplified in the first stages of the process. This is what is called the homeopathic effect. The sickness is disturbed and the pain hidden in the unconscious is manifesting more intensely. This is a good sign as the new symptoms, by disappearing afterward, will bring the sickness with it .
Energy as painkiller : The energy of the therapist sooths the physical pain because it triggers a muscular and organic reduction of the pain facilitating the healing process. Very often, this soothing has some effects on the psychological level. The patient can feel sleepy or very relaxed up to 24 hours after a session. He can also feel a certain tension and anxiety. This anguish, tempered by a great relaxation provoqued by the energy, is the pain that is being liberated, this pain that was expressed so far by the physical and psychological symptoms.
The energy can eliminate only the symptoms : The therapy can eliminate the symptoms only if the sick person is not ready to dive at the root of the problem. In that case, the sickness might manifest itself sooner or later more intensely. It can also happen that the same causes, once that they cannot overflow energy, provoke another illness that is even more severe in a part of the body or in an organ that is more fragile and because that part allows the metaphoric expression of these causes.
Unconscious resistance to healing : Sometimes, the patient will unconsciously resist healing. This means that the sickness is so well integrated in the psychology and the social and family system of the patient that it plays an adaptative role in him/her. For example a physical handicap can allow someone to dominate his relatives, to justify an emotional or financial dependancy or allow the person to escape certain fears or responsabilities, or to punish himself for some guilt more or less conscious. A sickness can also be geneticaly rooted and be part of a biological heredity closely linked to a psychological family system. These difficulties can be overcome but will require more efforts and time from the patient and the therapist.
Bewitchment (or possession) by a fusional and close relationship : It happens, for children but also for adults, that the psychic and physical illnesses are manifestations of problems or a psychic dynamic repressed by a close member of the family (or a family system) with whom the patient is in close and merging relationship. The pain and emotion repressed by one of the family member or by the whole family system floods the psychich system of the other person (the patient) and/or is somatised in the body of the other. This is what is called a bewitchment or a possession, and one becomes the other, just like a mystical relationship.
Bewitchment by agressiveness, grudge and hate : It happens that a patient unconsciously interiorized a strong agresssion from someone else towards him. This agressiveness, which is a desire interiorized by the patient but belonging to the other, destroys, breaks into silence and form a distance between the spirit and the body of the patient. To cultivate a secret grudge towards someone can become a devastating violence. It’s by the archetype of bewitchment that we can understand such an influence from a distance and in silence.
A genuine bewitchment : Sometimes, the causes of an illness or a sickness can only be understood as a genuine bewitchment. This phenomena is more common in certain ethnic groups, but is found more and more in a growing number of people joining sects (satanic cults for example), or on other groups that practice positive thinking, certain meditation techniques or others who participates in Christian or other fondamentalist cults.
The energetic healing fulfills some deficiencies : The energetic healing does not replace traditional medicine. It only complements some of its weaknesses, more precisely the responsibility of the health of the patient of himself by himself.
Sicknesses and illnesses are often perceived by the therapist/shaman as symptoms of a symbolic loss of balance of the person victim of the sickness or the correspondant lack of balance of his family and/or community. It always concerns a global system. Individual sickness allows the system to survive, to be maintained, to be preserved, to survive, to adjust itself. Sicknesses makes it possible for the individual or community systems to last without transforming itself. Real and lasting healing necessarily implies a systemic transformation of the individual and of its community. This transformation always come with a conscious emergence of his repressed pain and with a liberation of this same pain.
TABLE 1 : Comparison between the shaman and the psychotherapist (Dubois, 2000)
Shaman
He moves easily in the « other world » that he knows well because he explored it in depth;
Psychotherapist
He moves easily in the unconscious part of himself and/or his patient, parts that he knows well because he studied it in depth and has explored his inner self.
Shaman
He meets « evil spirits » who creates illness and death and also meet good spirits that gives health and life.
Psychotherapist
He discovers painful emotions (pain or death instincts) that causes illness or death and also helps the patient discovers inner resources (strength or life instincts) that give health and life. His own inner exploration allows him to know the darkness and to bring it light.
Shaman
Because he is mastering the spirits, the shaman can heal psychic or physical illnesses; the good spirits replace the evil spirits.
Psychotherapist
Because he is mastering certain psychological theories and techniques, he can help the patient get rid of the psychic or physical illnesse. These theories and techniques allow the therapist to dynamize the resources of the patient to get rid of painful emotions and illnesses.
Dubois’s model is interesting because it links traditional shamanistic concepts with contemporary psychology. As we have seen, the western therapist interested in shamanistic concepts can find in this model a base for a better understanding of many apparent paranormal phenomenas that might have been previously interpreted as crazyness or neurosis. It can also deepen our knowledge and know-how of psychic or physical illnesses that could not be previously treated.
Some things became clear for me after reading Dubois’s work. First, for anyone wanting to work with people in a therapeutic context, it is essential and an absolute prerequisite to have worked extensively on oneself before working with other people. Otherwise, we will not be able to explore totally and freely painful experiments of our patient’s life as our own unfinished and incomplete issues would interfere with or be triggered by our patient’s painful life issues and might reactivate our own pain. Secondly, when working with another person seeking our help, we must take into account all the past relationships that constitute this person’s life as it is still alive and active inside of the person. In this sense, bewitchment, an important term in shamansim, can be considered as past authority figures in a person’s life that are still controlling him/her, their behaviors, thoughts patterns and/or beliefs.
So eventually, one should consider working with a systemic approach - whenever it is possible - to put an end to this possession. And the ultimate goal of therapy is to stimulate self-help in the other person, bringing him/her to take full responsibility for his/her own life. In the first steps of the therapeutic relationship, the goal is to create security and trust in the other so he/she can open up and start uncovering and sharing painful or shameful experiences from the past, to gradually make him/her more responsible for the introspective process as he/she gains confidence. And finally, it seems clear to me that it is sometimes necessary to start working from the physical pain and illnesses of our patients if we want to be able to have access to the psychological and psychic worlds as the body often reveals unconscious traumas.
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