The split between primitive “Body” healers and soul or “psychological” healers

In this post I will be talking about the split between primitive “Body” healers and soul or “psychological” healers. It makes me think of the split in alchemy, where at first it was one integrated science, but then the practice became divided into basically two different sects. The “vulgar” alchemists who became the chemists and only dealt with matter on the material level, and the “philosophical alchemists, like Gerhard Dorn, who dealt with the spiritual and mental aspects. This only seems to happen to the West, as far as I can tell. The East doesn’t ever get into splits because Jung says that their culture was allowed to develop organically, whereas the West was split off from its Pagan unconscious when it converted into Christianity.

However, that being said, the psychosomatic aspects are returning to the West, not only with things like Yoga but also even with Alchemy. Dennis William Hauck, Robert Bartlett, Avery Hopkins, and Sajah Popham are a few movers in the field of alchemy, integrating both the vulgar and philosophical. I suggest looking into Avery’s website if alchemy is of interest to you, which is www.kymiaarts.com.

Now back to Psychology. Ellenberger has a table on page 47, where he lays out a few differences between primitive healing and scientific therapy. The third line he denotes that the primitive healer uses not only bodily methods but also psychological one and the scientific therapist splits the two, with the exception of psychiatry (Discovery of the Unconscious pg.47). Even though Ellenberger says that it appears to be headed back towards that way, I have a hard time believing there is much progress being made for that, especially in the intuitive Jungian world. I have been on some Jungian forums with some actually trained analysts and whenever I bring up anything about the body, the forum goes silent. So I think it is a matter of typology. The reason the alchemists split into two, the reason the Jungian world goes deaf when you mention the body is because of the split between sensation and intuitive types (in a sweeping general sense, I have no evidence or statistics to back this up, only experience). The vulgar alchemists or the medicinal physicians favor the sensation, material camp, and the philosophical alchemists and the Jungians favor the intuitive, philosophical camp. Both are one-sided.

The only reason that I can think of why the East or indigenous people don’t split this is because of the lack of a developed ego. It is much more communal rather than individual, “Confession of sins is usually public among primitive peoples; the secrecy of confession does not exist.  (Discovery of the Unconscious pg.24) and “And furthermore, has gone from public display in indigenous peoples to the private room of the clinician’s office.”(Discovery of the Unconscious pg.39). So, as it often ends up being, for the West, the wedge between body and mind is created by the splitting ego and consciousness which has a separative function that allows us to become conscious of a thing. The knower and the known, which comes at the expense of the unconscious for the West, but for the indigenous people, they remain connected, but also may never leave.

Ellenberger, H. (2006). The discovery of the unconscious: The history and evolution of dynamic psychiatry. New York: Basic Books.

Kymia Arts. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.kymiaarts.com/