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The Wounded Healer:

A Jungian Perspective
Kathryn C. Larisey

A nxiety, dizziness, a sense of impending doom. What is

happening to me? I am supposed to be hosting my
daughter’s 8th birthday party. Instead, I am sitting on
the edge of a hospital bed in the emergency room. Heart pound-
ing, head down, hands clutched before me. What am I to make
of all of this? I thought I was having a heart attack, but they are
calling it Panic Disorder. What? Me? I have a disorder? This
can’t be happening. I am a mother and a wife. I have a family to
care for. They are counting on me. I pray for this terrifying mo-
ment to pass so that I can return to my household duties.
Into the hospital room walks a man dressed all in black with
a white collar. He is a priest. With no introductions, he quietly
takes a seat next to me on the bed. We sit together in silence for
what seems like an eternity. “So you want to be a healer,” he
says, interrupting the stillness. “What?” I ask. “You want to be a
healer,” he says again. “It is moments such as this one wherein
healers are born.”
Eighteen years have passed since this priestly visitation.
Simply, and with no fanfare, this humble parish priest was artic-
ulating the archetypal energy of the Wounded Healer. It was a
complete change in perspective for me. What I thought was a
Journey Up was really a Journey Down. The Path of Ascent was
really a Path of Descent. The most skillful clinician, rather than
being a strong and capable model of good health, is one who has
The Pear Tree suffered from all sorts of illnesses and is being transformed by
those agonies.
by Ginger Murchison This shift in the perspective of the healer is at the core of
Jung’s writings. In his chapter entitled Fundamental Questions
of Psychotherapy he explains:
that, for years, flowered
has fallen Freud himself accepted my suggestion that every doctor
home to the borers, should submit to a training analysis before interesting
himself in the unconscious of his patients for therapeu-
their greed tic purposes…. We could say, without too much exag-
for not only the fruit, geration, that a good half of every treatment that
but the flesh of the tree. probes at all deeply consists in the doctor’s examining
himself, for only what he can put right in himself can he
hope to put right in the patient. This, and nothing else,
Hard to say
is the meaning of the Greek myth of the wounded physi-
what we look like to them, cian. (Collected Works, Vol. 16, p.115-116)
worming our way through these rooms,
Jung could not be clearer. Theories and interpretations are not
our hungers fatal, too. much help in the terrifying depths of the psyche. A psychothera-
pist’s own experience of being wounded is what helps her face
the suffering client in simple relatedness. Jung is suggesting that

Kathryn Larisey is a psychotherapist, clinical supervisor,

and spiritual director in private practice in Atlanta, Georgia.
She specializes in dream work and sacred dance as spiritual
practices that open the heart to deeper union with God.
Kathryn is a member of the Atlanta Jung Society and is a
Candidate with the Inter Regional Society of Jungian Ana-
lysts.
Dead Tree © Vladimirs Koskins, [Link]

© 2012 C.G. Jung Society of Atlanta

 [Link]
the therapist’s “mental health” is not presumed “superior.” To Wounded Healer is central to the Christian Gospels as well.
sit quietly and hear a client’s pain acknowledges a mutual help- In the Gospel of John, Peter is protesting that Jesus is going
lessness to “do” anything to make it go away. The training to to wash his feet. But Jesus’ words to Peter trigger the same fun-
hold such a container comes from the therapist’s willingness to damental change in perspective that Jung is trying to evoke.
confront her own unconscious material. Jesus says in John 13:1-15,
Jung links the archetype of the Wounded Healer back to a
Greek myth of antiquity. The myth of Chiron tells the story of If I do not wash you, you have no part with me… For I
how the centaur was wounded by an arrow from Heracles’ bow. have given you an example, that you also should do as I
Chiron does not die; instead, he suffers excruciating pain for have done to you. Most certainly I tell you, a servant is
the rest of his life. It was because of his wound that Chiron be- not greater than his lord, neither one who is sent great-
came known as a legendary healer in ancient Greece. er than he who sent him. If you know these things,
blessed are you if you do them.

Jesus knows that the tradition in those days is for the lowliest
person in the room to wash the feet of those who enter a room
after a journey. So his words are ushering in a totally new sense
of what it means to be a helper. Taking the “low place” is the
way into the healing profession. “High places” are to be surren-
dered.

J ung is also referencing the myth of Asklepios. This legend-

ary orphan was placed with Chiron to learn about the heal-
ing arts, and he eventually became known as the “Greek God of
Healing.” Homer referred to
him as the “Blameless Phy-
sician.” The myth records
that Asklepios was so
skilled as a healer that he So, what does it mean for a psychotherapist to resonate with the
succeeded in bringing one of archetypal energy of the Wounded Healer? As clients make
his patients back from the their way to my psychotherapy office with their dreams, confes-
dead. After his death the sions, and tears, it is almost as if there is an alchemical foot-
Cult of Asklepios grew very washing taking place. I am washing their feet, not out of a sense
popular, and pilgrims of superiority and perfection, but rather from an energetic field
flocked to his healing tem- of having my own feet washed as well. The poet Rumi echoes
ples. In his honor, harmless Jung’s words when he sings:
Asklepian snakes were used
in the healing rituals and Your defects are the ways that glory gets manifested.
were left to crawl on the Whoever sees clearly what is diseased in himself
floor of the temple where begins to gallop on the way. There is nothing worse
the sick and injured slept. than thinking you are well enough.
From this myth emerged the
image of the single serpent The primary requirement for becoming a psychotherapist is not
around a cypress branch. the intellectual training. It is not the methods and techniques. It
This so-called “Rod of Ask- is simply the willingness to kneel and be washed.
lepios” remains a symbol of
modern medicine today.
The archetype of the

Winter
Fall 2010
2012 • 13
© 2012 C.G. Jung Society of Atlanta