ABSTRACT
The author focuses on a series of encounters she and her husband had with Sioux medicine men during several summers on the Rosebud Reservation in South Dakota. In the company of these healers, the author and her husband shared clinical experiences on trauma and madness. From these encounters, the author learned Sioux teachings important for the conceptualization of madness, and of possible resonances these teachings had with psychoanalysis. In the same way that potters around the world use similar techniques to raise a pot around a central void – though the symbols carved or painted on the surface may vary – cross-cultural parallels can be drawn in our approaches to psychotherapy.
