The experience of relational trauma, particularly when occurring in childhood, wounds us in the deepest parts of our soul. It creates a cut, an interruption, a void in our continuity of being and implants us firmly in our material-somatic essence. The trauma makes itself “known” in our bodies but obscures itself from our understanding. Its inchoate forces insidiously colonize our very spirit and smother our sense of aliveness; they constrain our becoming and render us mute. Our inner reality is uncoupled from the outer world and the transitional space between the two is foreclosed, sealing us off from our mytho-poetic creative depths.
Ultimately, early life relational trauma disavows in us the pre-ontological innocence of childhood and strips us of the primal sense of the possibility for wholeness. We are cast off onto the vast ocean of abjection and shame, eventually exiled into a life of insistent repetition. Subjugated by the punitive forces that have taken possession of our inner life, we become de-spirited and live without hope.
In the face of such psychic catastrophe, where our defenses collapse and where we are no longer intelligible to ourselves, we are left with a stark binary choice: either we acquiesce to the inner tormentor and make its demand for death an ever-present specter or we can “surrender” the authority of our own ego and heed the call to embark on the quest for healing and for a more authentic self.
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Join us this summer in Gubbio, Italy, for a week-long adventure as we accompany Dante Alighieri in his personal quest for authentic self-hood. Through a psychoanalytic-existential reading of key sections of The Divine Comedy, we’ll unpack and explore the universal therapeutic principles that may present themselves along the way. We’ll consider how the insights offered by Dante and his guides can serve as analogs for our own work as therapists. Join us on a journey of self-discovery by traveling with Dante as he guides us through the forest of despair, climbs with us up the mountain of hope, and leads us to a place of greater subjectivity and freedom.
Come join us this summer in Gubbio. Dive deep with us. Be amazed by the adventure. Don’t miss out!