Malcolm Rushton | “Jung – A Traumatised Man : How his Trauma Facilitated Psychological Healing in Others “

I would like to outline some of the struggles that Jung had to face in his early life which might have led today to a diagnosis of borderline personality disorder. Such people live in two worlds, between a well functioning life and psychotic spaces. They are, however, pathologised by this diagnosis. Jerome Bernstein came up with another name for the condition which maintains a neutrality and even focuses on the benefits that this condition can have in accessing unconscious processes, and bringing about healing of early trauma in a psychotherapeutic journey. He suggests that these patients live in the borderland between a fully functioning life and unconscious trauma, oscillating between two states. I’m reminded of the words of Leonard Cohen : “There is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in”. For those with the deepest crack, there is sometimes an access to a brighter light. I would like to focus on some clinical examples where considerable transformations have been made in deeply traumatised people by accessing unconscious processes.