The Psyche of the Body

A Jungian Approach to Psychosomatics

Denise Gimenez Ramos

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781135754433
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psicologia
• Subtopic: Salute mentale in psicologia

The Psyche of the Body is a passionate and well-informed plea for a Jungian version of psychosomatic medicine and psychotherapy. Illustrated by vivid clinical illustrations of case histories, The Psyche of the Body reviews the long history of psychosomatic medicine and models of the relationship between psyche and body that have evolved over time, and presents a full revision of research in the field over the last twenty years. It presents a much-needed theoretical model together with practical guidelines that demonstrate how the psychological aspects of specific illnesses should be handled in therapy and analysis. Practicing and training Jungian analysts, as well as all those involved in clinical treatment, will find the interdisciplinary approach to psychosomatic medicine promoted in this book fascinating reading.

Chapter 1

Some models and concepts of disease and the healing process

The emerging paradigm brings to the surface of our consciousness, in a more detailed scientific form, what we, and our fathers and forefathers before us, have known all along.

(Laszlo, 1993: 223)

There are many myths and models today that determine how we view health and sickness and deal with them. They originate with the history of humans and evolve in tandem with the evolution of human consciousness. They are present simultaneously and paradoxically.

Humans in the information technology era appeal to the gods on the moment of pain, in search of the meaning of their suffering. However developed society may be, the mystery of life and death remains. Reason and faith, scientific and religious concepts are mixed in modern people who search for meaning, and determine their attitude in the face of health and sickness.

Myths mold our perception of the world and of the phenomena that we propose to study. They were created in the search for the meaning of life, and through them we come to have a more rational understanding of the world that surrounds us. According to the great scientist Joseph Campbell:

Myths are the metaphors of the human beings’ spiritual potential.

They relate us to nature and with the natural world.

(Campbell, 1990: 6)

The practice of the science of healing always reflects the morals, the ethics, the myths, and the psychological development of the culture of which it is a part. In the following pages we shall briefly discuss some of these myths and models, especially those that are still with us today.

To broaden our perspective, we can observe the development of the understanding of the process of sickness and healing as an example of the collective process of individuation, from the psychological point of view, as described by C.G. Jung. This allows a metaanalysis and a more discriminating understanding of the models that determine our clinical and research attitudes.

According to the analytical model, the ego, at birth, is immersed in the totality of the Self without discrimination between the I and the non-I. The pre-egoic state is a paradisiacal, unitary, non-divided state. The appearance of consciousness comes from the rupture of this indiscriminate totality. Slowly, certain contents of the unconscious start to separate and form the consciousness, this process being described by M. Fordham as “de-integration” (Fordham, 1957). What used to be a whole, One, becomes many. The original psychic structures have to be constantly broken, divided, to be integrated into the consciousness.

We shall see that the models collectively suffer the same process, and at the start of this century, after many “de-integrations”, we are arriving at a moment where a new mandala becomes complete, closing a long circuit of “integrateds”.

The primitive model

We have observed that the original unity is found to be much more preserved in children and in primitive people than in modern humans. In the latter, the superimposing of conscious structures aggregated around the ego has caused them to draw apart from their source, from their Self.

In primitive peoples, we see humans subjugated by the power of the forces of nature that their mind cannot understand. Humans equated these with divine powers, thus finding a temporary answer to their anguish in face of the unpredictable. Matter contained life, and natural events were personalized. Humans and nature were One.

Jung used the Levy-Bruhl’s designation for this process, “participation mystique”, which “denotes a peculiar kind of connection with object and consists in the fact that the subject cannot clearly distinguish himself from the object”: “This identity results from an a priori oneness of subject and object” between ego and Self (Jung, 1971: 781). We find this original unity as source of life and of consciousness in very different myths on creation and cosmic events. Reality that explained life was invisible and non-material. A “spirit of totality” integrated all the elements of existence.

If, for primitive peoples, life had to be lived in accordance with the natural order of the spirit, it was a natural consequence that their therapeutic procedures would have the same focus (Mauceri, 1986).

The quality of observing nature as transcendent is found in the majority of archaic religions and led to the development of medicine, where respect for the spiritual and for the search for greater significance as regards disease and health were basic. The one who cured was the mediator between cosmic forces and the patient, and his value was based on the belief that he was an extension of the relationship of the primitive with the cosmos.

The shaman was the specialist who mediated this order to the patient. Myths were transmitted by word and materialized in totems and in images. The shaman, as mediator, had, therefore, the function of contacting spiritual forces. A cure was never attributed to him. His status was earned through his ability to precipitate “ecstasy”. He would listen to the patient’s history not in search of a symptom, but rather to discover what the patient’s error had been. The disease was invariably the outcome of violating a taboo or offense to the gods. A cure lay in re-establishing the link of the human with the divine through repentance and sacrifice.

This idea also appears in the Bible, where we might consider Miriam, the first recorded example of punitive disease in Jewish–Christian culture. On criticizing her brother Moses for marrying an Ethiopian woman (dark skin), Miriam’s own skin “became sickly and white as snow” (leprosy) and was cured only after seven days of repentance and sacrifice (Numbers 12:1–15).

Rituals of different types, offers to placate the divine wrath, and techniques for sacrifice were developed. One good example is found amid the Tucano Indians in the Amazon region, where disease is known as doré, a term derived from doréri, which signifies “that which was sent, to order”. Disease among these Indians is interpreted as a product sent by a supernatural agent, as a form of punishment to those who disobey the moral norms of the tribe. On the other hand, doréri also means “to transform into something by means of the imagination” and, in this sense, disease and transformation are interconnected concepts. Here disease may have many causes (different transgressions) but always a purpose: “transformation”. The supernatural agent who has “sent” the disease, usually in the form of an animal, must be discovered and transformed, just as the patient is transformed when he interacts in his imagination with this animal, until he has subdued the animal. The function of the shaman is to intermediate this discovery by “invoking” invisible powers and strengthening the body by means of infusions and beverages (Reichel-Dolmatoff, 1971).

Thus, as the primitive medicine man also had knowledge of the medicinal properties of herbs, of music, and of verbal therapy (words were of great power in a non-literate culture), he provided two basic necessities of humans: a spiritual search and health.

All the civilizations that succeeded primitive society lent continuity to this train of thought. The Hindu, Egyptian, Chinese, Babylonian, Chaldean, Persian and ancient Greek civilizations built cosmogenic myths and had astronomy and “cure” as basic “science”. In all these cultures, we can perceive the interconnection between empirical ability and spiritual belief (Solié, 1976).

The medicine man–doctor–priest fulfilled the physical and spiritual needs of the patient in such a way as to conserve the harmony between psyche and nature. To a certain extent, the shaman was a forerunner of the use of the techniques of trance, psychodrama, dream analysis, suggestion, and imagination. However, while the shaman remembers the values of his culture with his patient, through collective myths, the modern psychotherapist seeks the patient’s personal myth in his unconscious past.

Perhaps one of the great differences between primitive and modern humans is precisely this excessive “personalism”. In an era of rationalism and technical knowledge, humans can dissociate from religious values and those of nature. The religious need became dissociated from the culture. Modern humans began to believe that through science and technology they might prevail over nature and that, therefore, the need for the spiritual, for significance, would be less relevant. And this has been one of the myths of our era, inherited from Greek medicine – the most important and perhaps the most developed science among the Greek people.

The Greek model

The Greek physicians were the first to separate the spiritual category from the material, and to develop a scientific approach such as we use today: observation, analysis, deduction, and synthesis.

Separating the study of beings and of the qualities of spiritual life was a prerequisite in order for Greek philosophers to understand natural phenomena. However, the idea of a controlling principle in the cosmos remained indispensable as a first reality in cosmology.

The concept of Nous, director intelligence, was considered the creative force that differentiated the material world through its ordinating activity. Nous was not on a par with a personal creator, God; it was closer to the idea of God, the Creator. To the Greek doctors, the world and the cosmos were recognizable and order prevailed in the multiplicity of things and in the unity of mutable diversity.

Use of music and the words of a spell were in common use in processes of cure. All acknowledged the curing power (“magic”) of the words and used them to expel “daimons”, the malevolent spirits of disease. Internal harmony might be obtained by music, diet, understanding dreams, and meditation that led to stability of the union between psyche and soma.

Plato, one of the most important figures of eastern thought in the mid-fourth century ad, recognized the primary role of medicine among the Greeks, and often alluded to the methods of the doctors in his Dialogs. If, in Phaedo, he stated that medicine should be an object of total man, and that a cure must direct the soul, in Charmides Socrates makes these ideas even more clear in his discussion with Critias:

as you ought not to attempt to cure the eyes without the head, or the head without the body, so neither ought you to attempt to cure the body without the soul; and this, he said, is the reason why the cure of many diseases is unknown to the physicians of Hellas, because they are ignorant of the whole, which ought to be studied also; for the part can never be well unless the whole is well … And therefore if the head and body are to be well, you must begin by curing the soul; that is the first thing. And the cure, my dear youth, has to be effected by the use of certain charms, and these charms are fair words; and by them temperance is implanted in the soul, and where temperance is, there health is speedily imparted, not only to the head, but to the whole body … Let no one persuade you to cure the head, until he has first given you his soul to be cured by the charm. For this, he said, is the great error of our day in the treatment of the human body, that physicians separate the soul from the body.

(Plato, 380 BCE)

The importance that Plato attributed to the noetic value of words and to the receptivity of the same by the patient is clear. In another text, his insights as to the notion of a placebo are marked. We might say that traditional psychotherapy associates to Plato through the emphasis that he gave to words in the process of a cure.

In the same period, over 200 temples of incubation dedicated to the god Aesculapius spread throughout Greece, Italy, and Turkey. Without a doubt, these were the forerunners of modern holistic treatment. A global vision of humanity predominated at these centers, and treatment was carried out by means of special baths, theater, medicinal herbs, sleep, and interpretation of dreams, all in a beautiful, pleasing environment (Solié, 1976).

Hippocrates of Cós, in the fifth century BCE, was from a family of several generations of physicians and members of the Circle of Aesculapius, and is today regarded as the father of medicine. With his observations and deductions, Hippocrates gave rise to modern medicine; words had a lower status in therapeutic methods. The rational attitude and therapy oriented by causality, with new methods for observation and treatment, took the place of the value of words.

Hippocrates regarded the brain as a receptor of phlegm, a redundant mixture liberated to relieve the body of extra heat. The heart was regarded as the seat of the soul. To Hippocrates, “anger contracted the heart, raised the heat, and carried the fluids to the head; whereas a peaceful mind, euthymia, expanded the heart” (Simms, 1980).

If we take these observations not in the concrete, physiological sense, but in a symbolic sense, we will see how correct they are. These are the expressions of feelings and of sensation from the point of view of the subject who experiences cardiac alterations. However, depreciation of the verbal mode limited the possibility of correct guidance between psyche and soma – the basis of psychosomatics.

Greek science was the start, therefore, of types of methods that were to become standard procedures in the medicine and psychology of our era. There was one great difference, however: the greater purpose was the search for knowledge of nature, and not the desire to dominate or change it.

Many centuries separate us from this position. For development, it was necessary that humans divide knowledge into compartments, separating religion, philosophy, and science. This tendency grew more pronounced through the eras until in the sixteenth century, with René Descartes, it became explicit, when he made a clear distinction between mind (spirit) and matter.

The Cartesian model

The Cartesian model emphasizes that matter is reality separated from the activity of the mind, although eventually, it would be associated to it on a divine plane. The body might be compared to a machine that would function equally well for good or evil, with or without the psyche:

I take the body to be no other than a statue or machine made of clay, which God created.

(Descartes, 1971: 120)

Although Descartes did not doubt that the origins of the spirit and of matter were in a single sphere (the divine), his methods were later interpreted as proposals to render matter and the spirit irreconcilable principles.

In a revision of the Cartesian method, Brown (1990) analyzes that the reason for our having made Descartes the villain creator of dualistic thought is the difficulty, even today, of dealing with the complexity of these phenomena. In truth, when we read his Discourse on Method more carefully, we will see that Descartes des...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of figures
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1 Some models and concepts of disease and the healing process
• 2 The analytical model
• 3 Disease as symbolic expression
• 4 Critical analysis of psychosomatic research
• 5 The analytical model in organic diseases
• 6 The symbolic body
• 7 Conclusions
• Appendix: Placebo studies
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index