In this article, I want to describe my attitude towards analytical psychology 22 years ago. (Wirtz, 2000) Back then, I first had to come to terms with everything that troubled me before I could give a mature 'yes' to this psychology of the soul. Today, given my age, I no longer have to be so critical and can admit that I feel at home in analytical psychology and can talk about some facets of my Jungian identity. Jungian thinking has shaped not only my professional identity but also my understanding of myself and the world, because the aspect of wholeness, which is present in analytical psychology, is important to me – the aspiration, shared by Socrates, to allow the inner and outer in a person to become one whole. In analytical psychology's view of reality, spirituality has the significance of an anthropological constant, because the psyche cannot be healed at all without 'touching the whole, and thus the highest and deepest'. (Jung, 1946, § 175) It was precisely his understanding of the soul, his holistic view of the world in which emotion and spirit, psyche and matter, body and soul form a unity, that helped shape my therapeutic approach. Jungian psychology focuses on what a person hopes for and what they need for holistic development. For me, analytical psychology opens up a wide field for exploring existential questions: who we are, how we became who we are, and who we want to become?
Literature, Philosophy, and the Door to Symbolism
Studying at the Jung Institute gave me the opportunity to combine my love of philosophy, psychology, and mythology with the world of art, music, and literature. As a student of philosophy and literature at the Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich, I wrote my first seminar paper at the age of 19 on 'Dream, Fairy Tale, and Reality in Kafka's Stories'. It was Kafka who opened the door to Jungian thinking for me, because it was while working on this seminar paper that I first deeply immersed myself in the world of symbolism. The poets of the Shoah, Celan and Nelly Sachs, later became pioneers in my understanding of trauma.
For as long as I can remember, I have been a passionate dreamer and regularly recorded my dreams in a journal. I felt at home in the language of dreams, always perceiving dreams as a mysterious energetic life force and recognizing in Kafka's stories the same wondrous boundlessness of the dream world, where time and space are only relative and may not obey logic. Looking back, I believe that the fascinating fairy tale motifs, especially those concerning transformation and metamorphosis, as in 'The Metamorphosis', paved the way for my understanding of the symbolic world, and also awakened my curiosity about splitting and dissociation, not realizing that I would later encounter these processes of splitting in my trauma research and therapeutic work. Back then, I did not yet realize how important the symbolic language of myths and fairy tales is for understanding human existence, but Kafka spoke to my soul. The dreaminess of 'A Country Doctor' and the general atmosphere of limitlessness and ambiguity that pervades his works captivated me. The blurring of boundaries between fantasy and reality, inner and outer space, made me reflect on what is considered real and unreal, natural and supernatural, and what the meaning of the seemingly absurd might be. I liked the paradoxical and bottomless quality in Kafka's work; around that time, I also began reading Kierkegaard, the great master of paradox. It seemed that all existentialist philosophy was permeated by thinking the unthinkable. His phenomenology of despair describes the attempt of the 'Self' that desperately does not want to be itself and simultaneously desperately wants to be itself. For Kierkegaard, despair meant 'not being oneself', the inability to develop as a person; for Heidegger, it was 'forgetting of Being'. Later I learned that despair is separation from oneself, a state of alienation. I also encountered this paradox in Heidegger, who described his philosophical approach to life with the paradox: 'Let go! If we do this, time will tell us how to be alive again.' (translator's note: this exact quote is not found in Heidegger. It seems to be the author's free interpretation of Heidegger's work "Being and Time")
Paradox as a Path to Wholeness
Studying analytical psychology deepened my understanding of paradox, as it permeates all of Jung's work. For Jung, paradox was the highest spiritual good, because in his understanding, only paradox can bring us closer to the fullness of life. At the same time, he always emphasized that we are incapable of grasping the paradoxes of evil or the paradoxes of love, because every linguistic attempt fails: 'Whatever is said, no word expresses the whole.' (Jung, 2016, p.384) Particularly in 'The Red Book', his revaluation of the indefinite and incomprehensible and his defense of ambiguity as the language of the unconscious placed paradox at the center of the psychological transformation process. For me, paradox, complementarity, the development of consciousness, and spiritual transformation are part of the main melody of analytical psychology. I see in Jung's thinking many calls to go beyond the familiar dualistic way of thinking, to no longer remain trapped in 'either-or' patterns, and to become open to the transpersonal space of consciousness. Spiritual traditions teach that only by overcoming dualism can we know the essence of being. Jung's inclination towards paradox also brings him close to quantum physicists, for whom paradox is a fundamental principle of the quantum physical world. The quantum physical picture of the world, advocated by leading physicists, is holistic and has a spiritual dimension.
Paradox in Therapeutic Practice
Paradox also plays an important role in therapeutic practice and even in methodology; I am thinking of Frankl's so-called 'paradoxical intention'. There, in the 'in addition to' pure awareness and critical reflection; in the oscillation between silence and speaking, dream and interpretation, understanding occurs as coincidentia oppositorum. Jung also referred to the koans of Zen Buddhism, which I internalized well in my own meditation practice. Jung writes that they 'illuminate instantly, precisely through their paradox, the difficult-to-understand relationship between the ego and the self'. (Jung, 1947, § 431) Thus, Jung also refers to the paradoxes of our therapeutic art, the Taoist wu-wei, 'to work without acting'. These insights helped me navigate the borderline states of traumatic worlds, because precisely there, where paradox rules – linear thinking and coherent feelings fail. As a therapist, I have touched the zero points of human existence and came to know despair not merely as an existentialist mode of being, but as a state of despair that I have experienced. My training helped me to inquire into the hidden meaning of these states of despair, which inevitably confront us with the questions of where we come from, where we are going, and why we live. I learned to understand despair as a creative stimulus for self-development, a possible step towards a change of consciousness. When I faced such states with my patients, it was helpful for me to trust our creative abilities and always view crises as opportunities to find resources, develop vision, and grow. Jung aptly described such archetypal symbolic processes of transformation: 'Its beginning is almost always characterized by a dead end or another impossible situation; its goal, generally speaking, is enlightenment or higher consciousness, through which the initial situation is overcome on a higher level.' (Jung, 1954, § 82) In my therapeutic work with traumatized people, I painfully realized the inaccessibility of our fate, our frequent helplessness in the face of life's challenges. We inevitably succumb to the basic fear of non-being, the fear of uncertainty, and suffering in relation to the prevailing fatal necessity of being. However, analytical psychology has also taught me that we are capable of self-transcendence, of expanding our ego in favor of a freer view of ourselves and of the whole that goes beyond ourselves. In this context, the concept of enantiodromia has also become important to me. Jung uses it to denote psychic movements of healing reorganization of the personality. Together with Heraclitus, he was convinced that any extreme can suddenly turn into its opposite and a new attitude can be born. This healing change into the opposite usually occurs only after a complete descent into the unholy, when a person believes they have finally fallen. I have often observed this dynamic of the soul in my practice, and The Red Book was also born from such a necessity.
Symbolism as the Language of the Soul after Trauma
Analytical psychology has also taught me that the myths and symbols of our human history illustrate that what defines us as humans manifests precisely in states of crisis; they point to transcendence, which we are increasingly losing in the modern era. As humans, we are not only creatures that know, but above all creatures capable of symbolism. Symbolic thinking gives things a deeper, additional meaning beyond their intrinsic existence, makes things 'speak', does not fix them to a sign, but makes them 'sing', as Rilke said. Symbols have the character of indicating how we can outgrow ourselves or, in Jung's terminology, how we can 'grow beyond' something. Jungian thinking indicates that symbolization leads to a deepening of our understanding of meaning. The Talmud already taught that truth does not come into the world naked, but hides in images and symbols. I learned this archaic basic human language in Jungian training, and it became indispensable for me when working with people who can no longer express traumatic experiences in words. It is symbols and images that penetrate those spaces where language falls silent. Their significance for people in borderline situations stems from their binding power, which allows fragments to be pieced together and creates meaning in the meaninglessness of what happened. In my practice, I have often realized that symbols can release and transform emotional energy in the process of awareness. Jung viewed symbols as 'transformers of libido'; their sudden appearance in the therapeutic process can revive frozen internal emotional processes. I enjoy working with references to literature, art, and music because these media often symbolize states of despair and life crises, thus filling the verbal communicative void familiar to us from traumatic experience. However, they also convey signals of hope for a life capable of self-assertion, life 'in spite of everything', as Viktor Frankl showed us in his theory of meaningful existence and his work. The artist symbolizes suffering and thus makes despair and hope understandable. As a viewer, I enter into a dialogue with the work of art, and my reaction to what I see deepens my understanding of meaning. My patients also symbolize their suffering. Their often chaotic traumatic experience gains a deeper and more understandable dimension in the mirror of symbols. Imagination, dialogue with figures of the unconscious, embodying stressful content in images are important elements of my trauma therapy, which aims to provide psychological relief, restore control and self-esteem. My modest analytical credo in therapeutic work can be most succinctly illustrated by Jung's explanation of his method: 'The effect I strive for is the creation of a psychic state in which my patient begins to experiment with their own being, where nothing is forever given and hopelessly petrified, a state of fluidity, change, and becoming.' (Jung, 1929, § 99) I see the salutogenic aspect of Jungian psychology in trauma therapy as the activation of resources, the activation of inner images through imagination, which can promote the integration process after dissociative splits. In stories, myths, and fairy tales, the eternal human questions of life and death, destruction and restoration, dismemberment and reassembly arise; they are the fabric from which my trauma therapy is woven. The search for what has been transmitted individually and collectively in our human history about the dignity of human existence, what healing systems were created, what rituals provided meaning and orientation – this careful investigation and mindful integration into my clinical work constitutes the context of my work. Traumatized people need the perspective that something can make sense and become good again, as the wisdom of fairy tales, myths, and spiritual traditions teaches us. Artistic-creative exploration of the sources of mysticism, poetry, fairy tales, mythology, and art can help here. The transformative power of symbolic form, the self-esteem regulating function of artistic expression, the knowledge that images reach deeper than words, and that visualization means a communicative leap, also allows me to use methods of receptive art therapy in trauma-therapeutic work. This symbolic approach to analysis stimulates my own inner images and encourages a wide range of expressive and creative possibilities. Paintings by Hieronymus Bosch, Goya, Picasso, Baselitz, Louise Bourgeois, and Frida Kahlo help me symbolize splitting, fragmentation, violence, and psychological fragmentation. (Wirtz 2009) I turned to mythical images of the underworld, studied Dante's 'Divine Comedy', and read the 'Books of the Dead' to not be completely without orientation in these borderlands of the conditio inhumana. An aphorism often came to my mind: 'Religion is for those who are afraid of going to hell; spirituality is for those who have been there.' Indeed, severely traumatized people have been through hell. At the same time, I have been able to witness that even in the darkest abyss, the saving power of light can be at work. Even in places of destruction and chaos, creative, renewing forces can be at work. I remember Hölderlin's words, which Jung loved to quote: 'But where danger is, that which saves also grows.' Not only in the Egyptian and Tibetan Books of the Dead and the Christian tradition, but also in modern consciousness research and the analysis of near-death experiences, transformation processes associated with light experiences are described. Traumatized people's narratives often use mythological or biblical metaphors to express the ineffable nature of experiences in the beyond. I believe Dostoevsky's understanding of hell as the painful state of being unable to love anymore is a poignant description of what trauma can mean for a person's soul and their capacity for relationships.
Socio-Political and Ethical Dimensions of Jungian Practice
Jung believed in the creative potential that every person possesses. Each of us can touch the life of another person and contribute to changing society. This hopeful aspect of Jungian psychology is invaluable for trauma therapy. Analytical psychology, with its concept of individuation as a process of developing the entire personality, is a psychology of hope that can restore connection to resources for coping with life and shaping it, focusing on the importance of meaning and value for a fulfilled life. For C.G. Jung, hope is the feeling that nothing is permanently unchangeable, that we can change ourselves, and that the future is open. Hope arises from immersion in darkness. This truth has become particularly important for me in the context of trauma therapy. Only if we dare to descend into the darkness, find the treasure in the earth, reclaim lost parts of the soul, will horizons of hope for a life of dignity, freedom, and respect for human rights open up again.
Feminist Perspective and the Fight Against Violence
The socio-political dimension of psychotherapeutic work has been a particular concern of mine as a feminist psychotherapist. The marginalization and alienation of the female sex prompted me to study the signs of female identity in the context of social interactions more closely. (Wirtz 1996) Feminist research has shown the extent to which male values set the standard for women's mental health and determine what is considered socially desirable female behavior. In my radio and television publications, I exposed gender relations as potentially violent. Particularly in the realm of sexuality, I made it clear that violence against women serves as a 'ritual of control and submission' and is structurally embedded in our society. The group of feminist psychotherapists to which I belonged also invited Christa Rohde-Dachser, who advocated for the systematic deconstruction and reconstruction of paradigms of femininity in psychoanalysis. To this day, I have maintained a critical re-evaluation of the images of femininity created in patriarchal discourses. I remained faithful to the basic values of feminist orientation: the personal is political – anti-hierarchical basic attitude – autonomy and independent responsible action. In my social and political activities, it was important for me to look differently at the reality of women's lives and their exploitation in this society. I worked for many years with women's shelters and institutions familiar with the problem of domestic and sexual violence. I uncovered the terrible taboo of sexual exploitation by clergy in church institutions as early as 1989 in research for my book 'Seelenmord' (Soul Murder). In an interview at the time, Jungians critically asked me whether my socio-critical position and my publications had anything to do with Jungian psychology. In my understanding, however, I was following a genuinely Jungian 'calling', because I was swimming against the current, and I believe in the deep wisdom that only when we swim against the current do we truly reach the source – a wisdom already advocated by Confucius. Fortunately, since the time of that interview, the self-awareness of Jungians has changed, and publications on socio-political topics, reflections on the state of the outer world as a mirror of our inner world, are no longer rare. The international Google group 'Analysis and Activism', which I have belonged to since its founding, brings together Jungians from around the world and has already organized various congresses. Another aspect of my Jungian identity was my involvement in ethical issues. (Wirtz 1996) I have always understood the individuation process as an event with a profound ethical dimension. Jung's comments on the archetype of ethical conscience, his emphasis on our responsibility to become conscious ('unconsciousness is the original sin'), his comments on the problem of evil, and Neumann's utopia of a new ethics – for me, these were important contributions to ethical understanding in analytical psychology. The social and practical consequences of this preoccupation with ethical issues manifested in my participation in various ethics committees (IAAP, SGAP, and the umbrella organization of all Swiss psychotherapeutic organizations SPV) with the aim of developing a legal and professional political approach to the problem of violent behavior in our profession. At that time, many publications appeared about the 'betrayal of Eros in psychotherapy', about abuse of power and narcissistic exploitation (Wirtz 1991, 1992, 1994), because I worked with many women who had previously experienced sexual and narcissistic violence from their therapists during therapy. I was shocked that precisely those women who were victims of incest in childhood were particularly often re-traumatized by 'analytical incest' in their therapy. I argued that we cannot justify, from either a human or professional perspective, refraining from shedding light on this taboo topic, as was customary until then. This betrayal of trust, the massive destruction of self-esteem, feelings of shame and guilt, and the loss of the horizon of meaning and value also damaged the spiritual dimension and led to the experience of 'soul murder'. Without the spiritual dimension and the knowledge that the psyche needs 'the meaning of its existence', therapeutic work remains fragmentary. In view of the spiritual otherworldly experiences and landscapes of death in the souls of my traumatized patients, more is needed for 'healing'. In my work with tortured and severely traumatized people in Ukraine, Jung's idea was confirmed that meaning is a central value that enables people to bear unthinkable hardships and suffering, while loss of meaning leads to self-alienation and stagnation of life energy. Today we live in a time when nuclear bombs and chemical weapons threaten to decide questions of life and death in a God-like manner – a scenario Jung already alluded to when he spoke of God giving humanity the power 'to pour out apocalyptic bowls of wrath on their neighbors'. (Jung, 1952, § 747) In trauma therapy, I often face the distressing question of whether transformation and individuation are possible after uprooting, loss of identity and reality, after the abolition of any sense of security and the destruction of the value system. I am helped by the Jungian conviction that meaning is inherent in us humans as a possibility of inner knowledge, and that it is important to find it and constantly recreate it as a myth. At the same time, I remember Jung's cautious statement, which he made in his mature years: 'It is a question of temperament whether one believes that meaninglessness or meaning predominates... Probably, as in all metaphysical questions, both are true: life is meaning and meaninglessness, or it has meaning and meaninglessness. I have the tremulous hope that meaning will prevail and win the battle.' (Jung 2016, p. 389) I have visited centers in various countries working with victims of trauma and torture and had many conversations about the despair of meaninglessness. My training activities in Russia, the Baltic states, and Asia, as well as my work as a Red Cross supervisor, also confronted me with the loss of meaning and value. The suffering of traumatized people resembles a via negativa: loss of contact with the body and immersion in darkness. In these states of suffering, there is a touch of emptiness, non-being is experienced as a black hole, an existential state of cosmic despair in which there is nothing left to lose because everything is already lost. The dissolution of self and world, the falling out of space and time, the total collapse of the previous worldview have become central categories for me to understand extreme trauma. Every trauma confronts us with existential questions that assert themselves with painful radicalism and absoluteness. In my publications on trauma (Wirtz 2014), I aimed to show the points of contact that traumatic experience has with fundamental spiritual experiences, in order to broaden the horizon of understanding of the transformative power of trauma. I have often witnessed how in extreme borderline situations, self-awareness breaks down, the experience of the whole 'I' disintegrates, and my patients seem seized by something all-consuming, archaically at the mercy of a force that constricts them and threatens to destroy them. I learned that trauma cuts through the soul like a fissure and is experienced as a black hole in the psyche, opening an insurmountable abyss between the person and their environment. The ego shrinks, is paralyzed, regresses, dissolves. Those who have lost the right to a home in life through traumatic experience, who have been deprived of all dignity and humanity, often lose themselves as well. Many severely traumatized people experience this as 'soul murder' (Wirtz 1989).
Spiritual Dimension, Wisdom, and a New Paradigm of Knowledge
Through the experience of the insubstantiality of the ego and the loss of familiar identity in the confrontation with non-being, it can happen that traumatized people begin to become aware of another dimension of reality, which also encompasses the transpersonal space. This potential leap in awareness affects all functions of the psyche: perception, thinking, feeling, and conscious behavior. Jung assigned an important place to the reality of spiritual experience that transcends the ego. By intensively studying Western and Eastern wisdom traditions, he made a decisive contribution to the integration of consciousness-expanding ideas into modern psychological thought. In my understanding, analytical psychology has something to say about the structure of consciousness and cognitive processes. For me, Jung is a representative of the practice of subjective empirical knowledge of absolute evidence. Like mystics and sages, Jung advocates the importance and effectiveness of inner experience. I am aware that modern scientific discourse recognizes only the scientific-experimental method as a source of knowledge of reality. However, I am convinced that we can only find access to the deep dimension of the world if we go beyond the canon of methods of modern science, which is limited by unambiguity, reproducibility, and falsifiability and is based on a very narrow concept of proof. In his lectures and works, Viktor Frankl was convinced that psychotherapy is ultimately based not on knowledge and technology, but on art and wisdom. In his works, Jung also made it clear that the spiritual experience of reality goes beyond the rational knowledge of reality based on purely cognitive understanding. Experience is always also knowledge that comes from within, from inner experience, in contrast to analysis – knowledge that comes from outside. Spiritual experience is a response to the mystery of being, which always contains the category of the ineffable, the inexplicable. 'Being is a mystery not because it is hidden, but because evidence and mystery are one and the same.' (Comte-Sponville, 2008, p. 169) The topic of the epistemological value of spiritual experiences has intensely occupied me for many years of my Zen Buddhist meditation practice, as well as in my analytical practice. Spiritual experiences concern the awareness of the true nature of human existence and insights into a higher reality. In such experiences, the emergence of a meaningful structure of the world underlying all external phenomena can occur. At the IAAP congress in Vienna in 2019, I spoke about the complementarity of rational and transrational cognition. I tried to intensify the tension between scientific understanding and numinous comprehension, between knowledge and wisdom, science and spirituality, using myth and its amplifications. The interrelationship between knowledge and wisdom, dual and non-dual consciousness, is also an important theme in Buddhism, which distinguishes between the small mind and the great mind. Great mind means expanded consciousness that goes beyond purely dualistic knowledge of the world; small mind is what in science is called the 'default mode network'. Hypertrophied scientific rationality, which Sheldrake calls the 'scientific delusion' (Sheldrake 2015), blocks all transrational experiential knowledge. This separates important experiences of the inner spaces of the soul from reality and destroys wholeness. This has led to a loss of a meaningful transcendental sense of home. Our metaphysical homelessness can be better understood against the background of the loss of a holistic understanding of the soul, which is constitutive for analytical psychology. Scientific empirical knowledge focuses on the objectification of external experience, on the description, measurement, and analysis of observable external facts. However, consciousness research makes it clear that in this way, a part of reality remains unrecognized as something entirely different. The scientific-empirical perspective of experience also requires an inner view, i.e., a view of the world from the perspective of the conscious 'I'. (Walach 2013) The inner subjective approach to reality, complementing the objectifying experiential scientific approach – this combination would correspond to a new paradigm. I think we need the complementarity of these two modes of functioning, which ultimately also relate to different modes of being. Molecular biologist and Buddhist monk Matthieu Ricard writes: 'Science functions without spirituality, just as spirituality achieves its goals without science. But the human being needs both to become whole.' (Ricard, M./Thuan, T.X. 2008). Jung was aware of this conflict between science and spirituality and was often ambivalent, but also very critical of the hegemonic claims of science. He pointed to the dark side of our Western culture with its dominance of the left hemisphere, excessive emphasis on the rational, and the neglect and devaluation of the feeling function and intuition. Ultimately, in my view, he advocated for the complementarity of science and spirituality. Consciousness, 'conscious being', the foundation of our being-in-the-world, is closest to us and yet very difficult to understand, just as we cannot see our own face. Regarding metaphysics, Kant also spoke of the necessity of a 'change in the way of thinking', which we can describe – translating into modern scientific language – as a paradigm shift. In my understanding, Jung paved the way for this paradigm shift, towards 'awakening', as the Gnostic tradition calls it. Just as in traditional religions through mysticism, reality that can only be described through paradoxes, today knowledge is opening up in the classical sciences through quantum physics and quantum biology. I have always liked how Jung responded to accusations that he was not a scientist but a mystic: 'A little more Meister Eckhart would do you good.' The mystical core of Jung's psychology manifests not only in his references to Meister Eckhart and Jakob Böhme. Jung was convinced that all mystical experiences have an archetypal root and that the goal of all spiritual efforts is connection with this primordial ground, where the solitary modern person has reached 'the extreme edge of the world: behind him lies what has fallen away and been overcome, before him the unaccomplished nothingness, from which everything can still arise.' (Jung 1928, § 150) The love of paradox also places Jung alongside the mystics. The wisdom of paradox is a key characteristic of spiritual realization, as mystical texts show. Jung saw a kindred spirit in Meister Eckhart and often quoted him. His wisdom of letting go, of 'detaching' from one's 'what', of the fact that our soul grows not by adding but by discarding everything that conceals the true essence – this also applies to Jung. These mystical wisdoms also show the way for my own individuation process. 'Allowing things to happen, doing in non-doing, allowing oneself to be oneself, as Meister Eckhart did, has become the key for me that opened the door and led me onto the path. You must be able to allow things to happen psychologically.' (C.G. Jung, CW 13, & 20) In my approach, this means constantly letting go of diagnoses, concepts, expectations, and judgments in the therapeutic process, in order to remain as alert, open, and present as possible. Awareness and the practice of letting go are part of the wisdom of all spiritual traditions. It is a way of being that says 'yes' to what is, and also 'yes' to the awareness that learning to live means learning to die. 'Living farewell' is a form of healing letting go, a courageous encounter with the transience of our being. Remaining in a state of mindful wakefulness, I immerse myself in the flow of life and become open to intuition and inner images. A mindful approach to life leads to greater intuitive insight and deeper contact with one's inner wisdom. This wisdom allows me to feel that, paradoxically, I find myself by letting go. In the way of life of letting go, with the guiding principle of trust, an unbreakable connection to something greater, and surrender to the organic situation, the controlling, evaluating 'I' relinquishes its controlling function and gives the 'Self' space and a chance to work.
On the Border: Trauma as a Path to Becoming
Long before the intersubjective turn, Jung pointed out that subjective experience is constitutive for building psychological theory (Jung, 1976, § 275) and has a decisive influence on therapeutic action. He described how he stopped thinking when he asked himself what his own life model was, because he had 'reached the limit' (Jung, 2016, p. 192). For me, analytical psychology is a psychology of the border, because Jung himself reached the border in his inner experience and in his relationships and crossed it. For me, the borderline situation of his personal crisis and its working through in 'The Red Book' is a testament to creative self-transcendence, a spiritual message that the soul is connected to a dimension that goes beyond the ego. Analytical psychology is rightly considered the European precursor of transpersonal psychology, as Erich Neumann first used the term 'transpersonal' in 1953. In America, the transpersonal movement only emerged in the 1960s thanks to Maslow and Grof. What was later called symbolic or spiritual intelligence in transpersonal psychology was already anticipated in the mythopoetic imagination of The Red Book.
Jung also explored the archetypes of the collective unconscious, breaking down the limiting boundaries of consciousness and illuminating the transcendent aspect of archetypes. This borderline nature, which in my understanding (Wirtz 1989, 2018) has a traumatic origin, awakened great resonance in me because, through my own experience of confronting life and death, I became convinced that catastrophes and moments of great emotional stress can open doors to deeper spaces of consciousness that were previously inaccessible. My inner psychic landscape was already shaped by the archetype of death at birth, and I had to learn early on that death and life belong together in a paradoxical unity: 'Becoming and death are the same curve.' (Jung, 1934, § 800) and that beginning and end form an indivisible continuum. The mystery of 'dying and becoming' (Wirtz, 2018) also became a guiding principle for my therapeutic work in the border spaces of the soul, as I often encountered this archetypal pattern in the context of my work in trauma therapy. Therapy consists of restoring the horizon of meaning and value that creates identity, because therapy with traumatized people often revolves around questions of meaning and meaninglessness. There is a great need to re-locate oneself in the complexity, madness, and meaninglessness of traumatic events. Over more than 40 years of my analytical work, I have learned much about how to cope with powerlessness; about human dignity that remains despite the contempt or shame caused by inhuman acts. I learned about the transformative power of traumatic life events and witnessed the transformative power and profound changes in consciousness of the ineffable experience of suffering. The black hole of suicidal devastation of feelings and the destructive darkening of the soul when entering the space of violence have also made me feel the limits of my therapeutic self-image, which is oriented towards healing and cure. It was not only in the dark psychiatric emergency wards of war-torn former Yugoslavia that I experienced the state of desecration, of being alive and dead. My many years of work with women who were victims of sexual exploitation, with men who experienced sexual violence from their priests and sports coaches, with victims of mass rape during the war, and with Holocaust survivors initiated me into these deadly landscapes of the soul. There I had to learn painfully that on the borderland of the souls of those who escaped from torture chambers, sometimes no healing herb grows. Without the traditional experience of the collective unconscious, without my spiritual rootedness and belief in the ultimate, unprovable meaning of my therapeutic participation and support, I could not have confronted evil and endured powerlessness. In particular, the prospective function and teleological structure of the psyche described by analytical psychology are very helpful to me in therapy with people at the zero points of existence. I was also able to draw on my knowledge of philosophy, where I studied Jaspers, who wrote about exceptional situations in which the self-image is questioned and one's own worldview and beliefs are shaken. These are moments of truth; they show who I am and who I can become. Sometimes, in the meaninglessness of catastrophe, in failure, an understanding of the meaning of the whole and of human existence opens up. Karl Jaspers introduced the term 'borderline situation', which reveals an existential truth: the threat to our existence posed by death, guilt, meaninglessness, our fear of non-being, emptiness, and fate. However, Jaspers sees the possibility of experiencing transcendence precisely in suffering in these borderline situations, in radical upheavals. Only when we say 'yes' to the borderline situation, appropriate it, and thereby overcome it, do we realize who we truly are as human beings and who we can become. Jaspers' thoughts resonate with research on post-traumatic growth, because traumatic experience can cause great suffering, but it also leads to the unfolding of forces that go hand in hand with a new perception of life, a deepening of spirituality, and an experience of meaning. After traumatic experience, victims often have the ability to develop more holistic views of life, even in its traumatic dimensions, which also become more understandable against the background of theories of emergence and complexity. The transformative power of suffering enables resilience, deepened self-knowledge, self-dedication, and expansion of consciousness. Jung emphasized how important it is to accept one's own fate as something wisely given to us, so that it can be transformed into reality. For him, destruction often serves becoming, and following Rudolf Otto, he saw the creative and destructive aspects of the numinous together. In the understanding of analytical psychology, illness and despair are a crisis of meaning and maturation, but the loss of wholeness and unity is ultimately a challenge to become a full person and take responsibility for one's own shadow sides. Illness and despair are an attempt by nature to shake the person and reunite them with the sources of their emotional life by immersing them in their own depths; they embody the possibility of the individuation process. Of course, I have painfully realized that I cannot give my patients what they seek in trauma therapy – faith, love, hope, knowledge – but I learned from Jung that we can make faith, love, hope, and meaning tangible through the unconditional dedication of our whole personality, through our 'yes' to the being of others, through our respect and humility before the enigma of human existence. In recent years, I have been intensively engaged with the question of the complementarity of knowledge and wisdom; my husband and I are also working on a book that aims to reconcile these two ways of understanding reality. We both learned from Dürckheim and share his conviction: '…Today, some active wisdom is needed that connects the inner with the outer and recognizes that the inner and outer are two poles of an indivisible whole, a wisdom that would simultaneously unleash the extraordinary potential of the spiritual powers of the human being and be a tool in the struggle for justice.' (Dürckheim 1981, p.164) I understand wisdom as knowledge of the heart, a loving way of knowing the whole in its essence, meaning, and purpose. For me, it is part of a mature form of spirituality in which the ego relinquishes its dominant position and opens itself to something greater, in which the person recognizes themselves in their essence and changes according to their destiny. Without contact with my inner wisdom, without my openness to intuition, without my efforts directed towards the integration of the good, the true, and the beautiful, I would get lost in the chthonic fields of dreams. I tried to understand and support mental transformation processes through a synthesis of head, heart, and body, and also tried to see with the heart, as the fox taught the Little Prince, because the essential is invisible to the eyes. Analytical work is primarily not about knowledge and practical skill in solving complex problems, but about existential questions of 'why' and 'wherefore'. Without wisdom, it is impossible to integrate evil into one's own worldview, yet this is necessary to encounter violence within oneself and work towards its transformation. I discovered my personal connection to wisdom during encounters with Sophia in Russia, Guanyin in China, and Tara in India. In my workspace, there are icons and sculptures of Sophia, Guanyin, and Tara; for me, they embody wise, all-encompassing compassion for human suffering. In active imagination with these archetypal figures of wisdom, I increasingly learn to overcome the uncertainty and incomprehensibility of the world and to stand up for justice, peace, and reconciliation. The way of being of these archetypal figures accompanies me as I traverse the emotional landscapes of death of my severely traumatized patients. These archetypal embodiments of wisdom also encourage me to recognize and further develop the deeply inherent human capacity for love and wisdom, to become more creative, more compassionate, and more aware of the universal connection.