ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a segment of a larger project, a personal and professional preoccupation with the problem of psychic pain, and how this affects the way psychotherapists train and practise. It suggests that psychotherapy training and practice can become a "false-self enterprise when carried unchallenged from the cultural cradles of Europe, the United States, and spiritual Asia. The chapter also suggest that the nature of antipodean psychic pain begs to be studied as a professional, psychoanalytic enterprise. It describes some incidents, such as petchkovsky's snake dream, japaljarri's snake dream response, japaljarri's warna tjukurrpa, the idea of an alcohol story—the parma tjukurrpa, meeting old jungarri, and walking into a site and meeting nangala's grief. Aboriginal Tjukurrpa, although transmitted in a veiled way and guarded according to the conventions of a mystery, is nevertheless an active psychic force. It is not simply a metaphor for the country. Nor is it a poetic way of coding environmental knowledge.
