ABSTRACT
This chapter begins with Edward Edinger’s description of the birth of the vocation of depth psychotherapy with its three major historical antecedents (the priest/hierophant, the philosopher-scientist, and the physical healer) and points out that shamanism goes beyond these three and constitutes the fourth root and major ‘river’ from which all others evolved as ‘tributaries.’ It posits that the discovery of the unconscious and a ‘second world’ began with the shaman and led to a new profession, the whole process demonstrating how the archetypal imagination works through culture to evolve greater psychological consciousness and ego capacity, including the capacity for symbolic awareness. Modern psychotherapy is then described as the quintessential place where the shaman instinct (and self-healing) is activated, as strong affect comes to presence in the transference, and it points out the difficulties of disidentifying from the complex and learning how to witness intensified affect, with examples from the author’s own process. The dark side of the shaman complex is described as therapist’s fascination with pre-symbolic affective energies, feeling compelled to mediate the broken places in others while being unaware of their own wounded places, thus turning their patients into baby shamans. Finally, the benefits of a differentiated shaman instinct are described as a capacity to hold both inner and outer relatedness and to appreciate both our own interiority and that of others, soul to soul. This is illustrated by examples from the author’s movement out of shamanic solitude and into a fully lived life.
