The Archetype of Child Abuse: Nixzmary Brown

Untethered

I first saw the publicized school picture of her,
chestnut shoulder length brown curls close to her face,
wide eyes staring out as if trying to see into a future,
twirling faster than can be caught by a child
who has only seen seven autumns.
Angels only visit us when we are mourning, when we are open to receive.
They greet us, sending a hummingbird heartbeat message.
I saw her face and heard a whisper.
Say something about this sweet child.
Say something about this no longer Earth tethered angel.

1.17.06 The wake for Nixzmary Brown. Copy photo from a few years ago. Best New York Post only. Nixzaliz Santiago, mother of Nixzmary Brown, along with her husband, Cesar Rodriguez, are charged with second-degree murder, child endangerment and assault in the fatal beating of seven-year-old Nixmary Brown, who was found dead in the Brooklyn apartment she shared with five siblings. Hundreds of mourners stood in the rain and wind on Wednesday, Jan. 18, 2006 while the child’s funeral services were held in a New York City church.

Nizxmary Brown enrolled in PS256 at the start of her 1st grade year. During this year she had few notable absences except towards the end of the school year in May. From September 2005 to June 2006, the attendance of 2nd graders at New York City Public School 256, Benjamin Banneker was the highest it had been in ten years.

The 1st grade teacher did not recollect ever having a behavioral problem with Nixzmary. The child reportedly arrived on time for school, and always presented her homework as required. The first grade teacher remembers her as a “quiet child”. Whenever called on Nixzmary Brown generally knew the answer to questions but was never a child to raise her hand and volunteer answers. She always waited to be called by the teacher even though she often knew the correct answer to questions. She successfully completed all the school-wide assessment tests and was promoted to 2nd grade.

The beginning of 2nd grade saw a remarkable difference in the attendance of Nixzmary Brown. In November, she was present in school for a total of only two days.

As the month was approaching its’ end, one of the social workers at PS 246 made a call to the child abuse hotline at Administration for Children Services reporting the absences and expressing concerns regarding Nixzmary Brown. A similar call had been made in May, 2005 when Nixzmary had been absent from school for a period of seven consecutive days.

Margarito Cotto was the PS 256 Social Worker assigned to Nixzmary Brown who on at least five occasions prior to December, had contacted ACS regarding the child’s absences and bodily bruises. As a result of her telephone call on December 1st to ACS, an ACS supervisor Orlene Cummings and caseworker Vanesssa Rhoden spoke with Nixzaliz Santiago, the mother, in her Chauncey Street apartment following their initial visit to PS 256 to interview the teaching staff and principal. After attempts to contact Ms. Santiago by phone failed because Mr. Rodriquez stated the former was too ill to answer the phone, the caseworkers had traveled the short distance to the family’s apartment. It was at this time that the premature miscarried fetus of Mrs. Santiago was observed by the ACS workers, in a jar on the couple’s nightstand.

On the same day, December 1st, prior to visiting the Santiago/Rodriquez home, the caseworkers interviewed Selena, Nixzmary’s sister at her school. Salena said more than once during this interview that Cesar Rodriquez had caused the most recent head injuries to Nixzmary which had required a visit to Woodhull Hospital Emergency Room on November 10th. The parents had previously reported to the school that the injury was from a “fall on a piece of wood”.

The time between that initial telephone phone call on December 1st by the school social worker, Margarita Cotto and the death of Nixzmary Brown on January 10, shows contradictory claims and denials as the Administration for Children Services, the New York City Police Department and the New York City Department of Education all attempt to limit blame of their agencies in the death of Nixmary Brown. Later, following the death of Nixzmary, the doctor at Woodhull who saw Nixzmary would insist that his diagnosis of the cause of her fall was consistent with and in agreement with information from the parents as to how Nixzmary’s head lacerations occurred.

School administrators and staff at PS256 were uneasy about Nixzmary Brown’s home life. The second grade teacher had reported several instances of body bruises to ACS, the agency responsible for protecting New York City children against parental harm. ACS field notes taken by staff at the school on December quote the teaching staff : “Stepparent beats mother and he is intimidating….Mother is withdrawn and passive, taking no action to protect herself or children.” Further remarks state, “Stepparent recently hit Nixzmary, causing lacertation on her forehead and a bruised eye.”

On December 1st, with this information and more from school officials, ACS , visited Nizxmary Brown’s home, interviewed her parents and instead of removing the children from the home, which they were empowered to do, allowed the children to remain with their parents. Nixzmary had playmates in the neighborhood and a family member of one of these noticed the bruised injuries on the child. Perry Robinson’s grandnephew often played with Nixzmary. Mr. Robinson says that Nixzmary told him, “He (Cesar Rodriquez) threatened to kill me and mom and everyone. Mr. Robinson remembers Nixzmary as being “so petrified”.

Due to Nixzmary’s frequent school absences, perhaps the days she was at her worst, anyone who could protect or remove her from her abusive family environment, never saw her most damaging signs of abuse.   Mr. Robinson says, “I saw her with welts on her arms, limping.”

He adds, “She would tell me she fell.” Maybe because Nixzmary tried to hide the stepfather’s abuse and was “so petrified”, Mr. Robinson and others at PS256, felt limited in their ability to intervene. There appears to have been enough evidence for concern on the part of the staff at PS 256, but not enough to secure a safe haven for Nizxmary away from her parents.

Since Nixzmary’s death, Ms. Cotto questions if she could have done more….visited the home and insisted on ACS removing Nixzmary. This is probably a question facing all of the staff at PS256 and the immediate neighbors, who came into contact with Nixzmary. Could I have done more? Why didn’t I do more? Following the discovery of Nixzmary’s body by police officers, New York City residents and neighbors of the Santiago family speaking to the media, continued to ask how such a “horrible” thing could have happened. Why hadn’t they seen the harm Cesar Rodriquez could have caused and why didn’t someone stop him?

But who could have stopped him?

The smell of magnolia

 Sometimes I remember a place that doesn’t exist anymore.
Like my grandmother’s side yard of the house built for her in 1946,
where pecan trees dropped nuts across autumn yellowed leaves.
It has been years but I can still feel in my hands
the rough edges of the small brown burlap bag that held pecans.
As I read the first news story about Nixzmary,
I was once again in my grandmother’s yard, nine years old, picking up pecans,
as the smell of late blooming magnolia passes over me,
on a warm day in November.

The Collective and Individuation 

C.G. Jung whose work has entered our American lives through his writings, and the clinical practice of analytical psychology, says that we must individuate—leave our collectives and suffer through learning the psychological pain of being alone. I believe the process of individuation was Jung’s most noted idea regarding becoming psychologically mature and morally responsible. He believed morality develops because of individuation. We cannot be moral human beings, if we remain only in concert with collective thinking throughout our entire lives.

A collective stance can only minimally support us in resolving issues of familial incest and child abuse. We can turn away from this kind of suffering because we may be afraid. As individuals, we also turn away because we do not feel responsibility for protesting—someone else will take care of the problem. This is what happens with collective thinking. The individual claims no power to stop abuse, to take conscious action in whatever form it takes.

Something drastic, usually murder must occur, and then the collective will pass a law as in the case of the death of Nixmary Brown. In New York State, there is now a Nixmary’s Law that punishes perpetrators with a maximum life sentence in prison for abuse of children under 14 years of age. This law comes too late for Nixmary Brown. Will it really help other abused children? Are we attempting to fix a Collective psychological problem only with mandated laws?  How can we as individuals feel our own morality, and take action to make important changes in the area of child protection? How can we deepen our morality in the face of abuse and the murder of children?

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Fanny Brewster, PhD., M.F.A.

Biography

Dr. Fanny Brewster is a Jungian analyst in private practice in New York City where she completed her analytical training.  She is a lecturer and workshop presenter on Jungian related topics. In December, she gave a workshop through the IAAP in Rome, Italy on the topic of “Black Lives Matter and Jungian Psychology”.

Dr. Brewster is a writer of poetry and nonfiction. Her most recent poems have been published in Deep South Magazine and Evening Street Press. Poems are forthcoming in the Psychological Perspectives Journal where she will be the featured poet of that issue.  Her nonfiction book African Americans and Jungian Psychology: Leaving the Shadows is forthcoming this year by Routledge Publishing. Poems are from the author’s unpublished manuscript, Turn a Blind Eye:  The Death of .

The Phoenix and the Butterfly

As Spring emerges from Winter and we begin to see the buds on trees and feel the warm edge to the breezes, we are again nudged to consider the profound inclination of Nature—both human and earthly– to renew and transform.

There is a useful distinction between those two possibilities—renewal and transformation. The Phoenix is the symbol of renewal, as he rises from his ashes, restored and wholly himself. It seems that almost all cultures have some version of the Phoenix in their mythologies: the Egyptian Bennu Bird, the Bird of Paradise of the Persians, the Chinese bird called Feng-huang. In Jewish midrash, the Phoenix is the one animal that does not obey Eve’s admonition to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The reward is eternal life, (although it comes with no knowledge).

In the most common western versions of the phoenix story, the immortal bird burns itself up, becoming ashes out of which it is reborn. It can continually renew itself. It is immutable; even as ashes, it rises again just as it was before.

We all wish for renewal. We speak of restitution and restoration, of being made whole again. And yet, is this possible for us? Can we be like the phoenix? Is that psychologically possible?

Which brings me to the image of the Caterpillar/ Butterfly. Here is another common symbol of death and rebirth. And yet, it is the opposite of the Phoenix. For while the Phoenix is reborn to be exactly as it was before, the caterpillar is completely transformed.  It goes through a profound disintegration and reformation. It is ‘itself’ but utterly new. This is what actually happens to us through experience, we are changed.

So much of our suffering is activated by the idea that experience should not change us, that we just want to get back to what we were, or that we need ‘to get over’ things. The Jewish midrash leads us to see that we mortals will always be changing. In little and big ways, transformation is in our nature. We are  like the others creatures who ate from the apple and now have the knowledge of good and evil, and are therefore thrust into the knowledge of free will, cause and effect, and the flow of life. As Heraclitus says, “Everything gives way and nothing stays fixed” and “You could not step twice into the same river.”

And yet—the Self is immutable. As the archetype of wholeness it remains immortal. It renews and restores itself.

To bring this full circle: we have the capacity to be held by both symbols: The phoenix, as a symbol of Christ, of immortality and perpetual, consistent truth, holds us to a sense of Self—the part of us that does not change, no matter what. And the Caterpillar/Butterfly is a symbol that brings us the hope of, and the challenge of, being continually changing, affected by life, relationships, history, suffering, joy, love.

This spring let us allow ourselves to embrace our every-transforming caterpillar-selves while holding fast to the steadfastness of the Self.

Margaret Klenck MDiv, LP, is a Jungian Analyst in private practice in New York City. She is a past President of the Jungian Psychoanalytic Association in New York, where she also teaches and supervises. She is also a member of PAJA.  She serves as the JPA representative to the Executive Council of the IAAP. Margaret has lectured and taught nationally and internationally. Her most recent publication is Jung and the Academy and Beyond: the Fordham Lectures 100 Years Later, for which she served as co-editor.

I Lift My Lamp Beside the Golden Door

Since we live in Brooklyn, I have crossed the Brooklyn Bridge countless times, but even when I have to crane my neck Brooklyn-bound from Manhattan, I look for Lady Liberty. She moves me every time with her blazing testimony to the truth of the human spirit. In difficult times—after 9-11, Hurricane Sandy, or current waves of human emigration—I like to see her steadfastly lighting the way.

The goddess Libertas, widely worshiped in Rome and symbolic of emancipation from slavery, has appeared in various forms throughout history, most majestically as The Statue of Liberty. Libertas seems always to have been represented as feminine, for the promise of liberation is new life, ever the gift of the maternal matrix, wellspring of birth and transformation. We recognize the power of a new beginning and its potential to redeem all in us that has been forsaken, oppressed, or denied.

Liberation is an image of what Jung called individuation, the process of discovering your innate potential and becoming wholly who you were meant to be. Individuation, “the central concept of my psychology,” is a process by which “the psyche is transformed or developed by the relationship of the ego to the contents of the unconscious.” Symbols spark individuation, for only a symbol has the numinous power to unite conscious and unconscious and awaken us to a new reality. Like the Statue of Liberty.

Conceived and built in France as a gesture of friendship between nations, Lady Liberty inspired people from her inception. More than 100,000 French people contributed funds to create the 30-story copper lady. When Congress refused to allocate the funds necessary to build the massive foundation for the 225-ton statue, 120,000 Americans gave money. A symbol mobilized thousands to give Lady Liberty a home in New York harbor. Artists donated paintings, children sent small change, and Emma Lazarus wrote her famous poem, which concludes:

                       Give me your tired, your poor,

                        Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

                        The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

                        Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me:

                        I lift my lamp beside the golden door.

Lady Liberty represents more than freedom from injustice and oppression in the external world. She represents liberation in the inner world, as we set sail from restrictive beliefs, imposed roles, and one-sided attitudes. Like immigrants packed miserably in steerage for weeks, suffering and sacrifice often precede the discovery of new life. But if we embark on the journey of individuation, Lady Liberty will ever lift her lamp beside the golden door of wholeness.

AUTHOR

Deborah Stewart is a Jungian Analyst and Licensed Clinical Social Worker residing in Cape Cod, MA. You can find her at www.DeborahCStewart.com. She is Co-Creator of This Jungian Life Podcast.  She is a member of the Philadelphia Association of Jungian Analysts, where she co-chairs and teaches in the training seminar and contributes to the Association’s blog. She is an active member of the Inter-Regional Society of Jungian Analysts and participates in other professional organizations. She has a special interest in trauma and is the author of Encounters with Monsters: The Significance of Non-Human Images of Trauma in the Psyche.

The Healing Power of Myth

In describing myth, Kwame Scruggs, PhD likes to quote a kindergarten student, who astutely noted that “myths are stories that are false on the outside, but true on the inside.” Scruggs, who received his master’s and doctorate in Mythological Studies from Pacifica University, founded and runs Alchemy, a non-profit based in Akron, Ohio.

“The concept of our program is to create a safe space and a sense of community to assist in the development of urban adolescent males through the telling, discussion, and analysis of myths, stories, and fairy tales told to the beat of an African drum.” In the program, youth start in 6^th grade, with 22 weeks of in-school meetings per year until 8^th grade.  From 9^th-12^th grade the youth meet 10 months out of the year, four hours per session.  Scruggs, along with two others co-facilitators lead the youth through a fairy tale or myth, stopping periodically to elicit reactions from the participants, or to ask them to engage the material through questions that invite the young men to reflect on their own lives.

Dr. Scruggs’s work with Alchemy has received considerable attention in recent years. In 2012, the organization was one of 10 recipients presented with the National Arts and Humanities Youth Program Award from the President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities, the nation’s highest honor for after-school and out-of-school programs. Scruggs, along with an Alchemy youth, accepted this award at the White House. And last year saw the release of a documentary about Alchemy entitled “Finding the Gold Within,” by award winning director Karina Epperlein.

Scruggs is doing something important and far too unusual, in my opinion – he is taking Jung’s insights out of the consulting room, and into the world, where they can work their transformation magic. Of the 30 young men in the original core group of participants, 28 graduated high school on time, and 26 enrolled in college. Most of us who are passionate about Jungian thought know how beautiful and personally meaningful these ideas are. If we are clinicians, we have likely had the honor of seeing these ideas transform the lives of the individuals with whom we work. Alchemy is putting these ideas to work in the service of social change.

In advance of Dr. Scruggs’s upcoming workshop in Philadelphia at the invitation of PAJA, I got a chance to speak with him briefly. In our conversation, he shared with me a bit about his discovery of myth and its healing power. Scruggs was introduced to Jung during an African-based rites of passage experience in 1993. Through Jung, Scruggs became interested in the work of Joseph Campbell. When he read Michael Meade’s Men and the Water of Life, he knew he had found something of great personal value. At the time, he was counseling high school drop outs. He found that getting them to talk was like pulling teeth. When he shared with them stories such as The Water of Life, the youth engaged and opened up, allowing themselves to become vulnerable.

I asked Dr. Scruggs what about myths make them such effective tools for reflection and healing. “When you tell someone a story,” Scruggs explained, “it removes them from the situation. It gets around a person’s defenses.” One Alchemy student, reflecting on the power of myth, had this to say about how it works: “Because it’s not real but then again it is real. So instead of directly telling us how to become well and get better you kind of do it indirectly which gets into our minds better or in a different way.”

Alchemy’s program of mentoring youth through myth helps the young men to have a relationship with something greater than themselves, develop a sense of purpose, and become the heroes in their own stories. Powerful stuff, indeed. I can’t wait to hear more about it at Dr. Scruggs’s workshop in Philadelphia on October 9.

To buy tickets to this event, please go to https://www.universe.com/citywherepeoplearemended

To learn more about Dr. Scrugg’s work visit his site at http://alchemyinc.net/g-kwame-scruggs-ph-d/

Author

Lisa Marchiano is a licensed clinical social worker and certified Jungian analyst in private practice in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She received her MSW from New York University and completed analytic training at the Inter-Regional Society of Jungian Analysts. She is also a mom. Lisa is on the faculty of the Philadelphia Jung Institute. She is Co-Creator of This Jungian Life podcast. Her writings have appeared in Quillette, the journal Psychological Perspectives and in PSYCHED Magazine. She blogs on parenting for Psyche Central at Big Picture Parenting, and on Jungian topics at www.theJungSoul.com. Lisa is building an online community where mothers can explore the profound changes that motherhood brings. Please come by and visit at motherhoodtransformation.com.

The Archetype of Apocalypse in Culture and Dreams: A Jungian Perspective

“We are living in what the Greeks called the kairos, the right moment for a metamorphosis of the gods, of the fundamental principles and symbols. This peculiarity of our time, which is certainly not of our conscious choosing is the expression of the unconscious man within us who is changing” 

(Jung, The Undiscovered Self)

“Something new is trying to enter the consciousness of modern man in order to radically transform it, sinister and uncanny though it may be, meaninglessness is like a guest who knocks at our door asking for shelter…”

                                                                                      (Wolfgang Giegerich Soul Violence) typo

Why are visions of the end of the world so prevalent in our popular culture today? And why have apocalyptic themes been replicated in so many different forms across millennia; spanning art, religion, science, philosophy and our global media environments?  Do you ever have dreams with apocalyptic themes; hurricanes, tornados, tidal waves, earthquakes, floods, bombs, planets crashing towards earth (cosmophobia)?

Such dreams or inner dramas call out for our conscious attention. They provide a window deeper into our souls, and awaken awareness of the archetypal realm. Mythological themes and dream images, as well as real outward events amplify and express pieces of our human experience both personally and collectively. The theme of the Apocalypse is not a modern construct but rather is both ancient and universal. It reaches out and touches all of us. Bidden or unbidden, it presents itself in our human condition in the form of ecological dangers, wars, disease and starvation. Such themes may haunt us while we sleep as we plunge deeper into the unconscious often hoping to put the stresses of the day behind us.

As a Jungian analyst, one is often privileged in hearing the sound of apocalyptic murmurings coming from the unconscious via dream material.  Apocalyptic dreams may present when an individual is struggling to make necessary psychological changes in their lives, both inner and outer.  Strangely and surprisingly, they may signify healing efforts when the psyche is trying to assimilate trauma.  So while apocalyptic material from the unconscious may often feel scary and unwanted, it brings with it a message that contains the potential for transformation. This is quite a different perspective from a pessimistic catastrophic “end of the world” or doomsday outlook.

                       What is the meaning of the archetype of apocalypse?

Seen through a Jungian lens, the concept of the apocalypse is an archetypal construct.  An archetype is a pattern, a kind of primordial psychic ordering of images. Archetypes have a collective or generalized quality and contain dynamic energy. When archetypal energy is evoked or activated in the world, it is often autonomous.  Archetypes reveal themselves through experience and are expressed through images.  As Jung informs us, archetypes are spontaneous phenomena.  Archetypes possess their own purposefulness as both subject and object, they are universal images.

In general the term apocalypse means revelation. Apokalpsis is a Greek word with the root kalypto meaning to cover or to hide, the prefix is the preposition apo which means away from. Apokalypsis means to take the covering away from – perhaps from what has been secret, revealing what has been invisible.  From this perspective, we can consider that apocalyptic events and or psychic material may be revealing some new piece of our humanity be it personal or collective. Something new may be trying to emerge.

Jungian analyst Edward Edinger in his book Archetype of the Apocalypse, speculates that apocalyptic imagery can signify disaster only if the ego is alienated from or antagonistic towards the realities that the Self is bringing this material into consciousness.  Hence, one interpretation is that when our egos are unable or unwilling to embrace the messages coming from the guiding forces of the Self, the result can express itself symbolically in the form of apocalyptic end of world imagery.

The Self according to Jung is first an archetype and it represents the archetype of wholeness, a centerpoint of the psyche. The Self as seen through a Jungian lens has an ordering principle, and a transpersonal power that transcends the ego. It may be symbolized through images of the circle or mandala.  A recent popular film Melancholia by Lars Von Trier presents us with themes that may echo what both Jung and Edinger are telling us. Films can be considered a type of collective associative dreaming.

                    What role does a sense of meaning play in our lives?

Jung believed that man could not survive without a sense of meaningfulness about our lives. His psychology is essentially about finding meaning to address the alarm and anxiety he felt modern humanity was facing. Perhaps we are living in a time when the sense of the world hanging on a thin thread is piercing into our consciousness.  Jung believed in the redemptive role that we as humans play with the universe. In essence, when we change ourselves, we change the world.

The void in cosmic meaning is the deepest reason but not the only reason why the apocalypse meme is replicating around the world. Removed from nature and the cosmos, humans seem to possess an existential and insatiable thirst for visions of doom…  (Barry Vaker, The End of the World Again)

As we hopefully choose to consciously attend to the apocalyptic musings in our world both inner and outer, we hold in our hands the potential to effect change and transformation both personally and collectively. If we turn our attention away due to fear, anxiety, distrust and disinterest, we may be aligning with destructive anti-life forces rather than transformational forces. Destruction and transformation sit side by side. Our attitude and our unflinching awareness to both face uncertainty and to seek meaning may hold a key to how it all turns out.

AUTHOR

Ronnie Landau, MA is a certified Jungian Psychoanalyst and is a senior training analyst with the Inter-Regional Society of Jungian Analysts and the Philadelphia Association of Jungian Analysts where she received her certification. She is the past President of PAJA and past Director of Training. She is also the past Secretary on the Executive Board of the Inter-Regional Society of Jungian Analysts. Ms. Landau has taught and lectured on dream theory throughout the United States. She has also taught Transference-Countertransference dynamics in analysis throughout the US as well as Zurich, Switzerland along with “The Holocaust: Through a Jungian Perspective.” She is the author of The Queen of Sheba and Her Hairy Legs, The Exile and Redemption of the Erotic Feminine in Western Monotheism and Jungian Process.

Reverie on the broken heart…

The heart is a mysterious psychophysical organ. The ancient Egyptians sensed it had an independent memory of its own. The Greeks found it more important than the brain – Aristotle held it as the seat of intelligence. The 12^th century Sufi Ibn ‘Arabi tells us the heart has the power to imagine. With all this intuitive knowledge about the heart it is no wonder that when it breaks we are shaken to our core.

We know of heartache and the burdens the heart bears when it is exposed to painful revelations or unredeemable disappointment. When a friend haltingly whispers the news of their life threatening diagnosis, the knowledge is stored and held in the listeners heart where the heat of the secret burns. When our own soaring romantic feelings are shattered by the coarse realities of human conflict, our chest hurts with our heart’s struggle to bear the truth. But these kinds of labors put muscle on our hearts – teaching them to be staunch and resilient.

Breaking the heart is different and there is a great divide in the world between those whose hearts are still innocent and those whose hearts have been broken and as we meet the eyes of strangers there is a silent nod of recognition between those who bear the hidden scar.

In severe trauma often the heart breaks and cannot hold the memory of the events – images seem to fall into other organs. An unremembered sexual assault is voiced by the lower back as a piercing pain that makes physical intimacy impossible. Memories of excruciating childhood isolation lodge in the belly and are kept quiet by regular over-feeding. The remembered sounds of the front door opening and the leaden wine-soaked footsteps are encapsulated in the jaw and kept silent by the slow grind of the teeth.

A broken heart still works desperately to keep the soul alive. Each splintered part following its own disparate beat – a cacophony takes residence in the soul like a misery of ravens. Symptoms replace the natural unfolding.  Intimacy is replaced by lust – creativity becomes sepia repetition until the pain of living without heart comes to crisis. And that is the miracle.

When the suffering of the heart can no longer be silenced everything becomes possible. When that person enters my consulting room, I feel that nod of recognition rise between us. I do not believe the heart can be mended by the analyst, it is too sacred an operation. But with care and patience the strength to fulfil the suffering can arise, granting a certain silent dignity which orients the psyche toward the inner center where the pattern of the heart-in-wholeness can be found.

Offering ones heart-shards to the Self is the only way through.

AUTHOR

Joseph R. Lee is a certified Jungian Analyst and licensed clinical social worker in private practice in Virginia Beach, Virginia at www.DepthPsychotherapy.net. He works with adults and teens. He is currently the president of The Philadelphia Association of Jungian Analysts, www.cgjungphiladelphia.org, which provides a public seminar and trains Jungian Analysts. He is accredited by the I.A.A.P., and received his Diploma in Analytical Psychology from the Inter-Regional Society of Jungian Analysts. He lectures nationally on the Hermetic Kabbalah with a focus on its reinterpretation through modern idioms.