CELTIC SHAMANIC ABSORPTION
CELTIC SHAMANIC ABSORPTION ASSOCIATED WITH PSYCHOTHERAPY OF PSYCHOANALYTIC INSPIRATION
by Noella CHINTAMANI TUMULTI
« The most beautiful feeling one can experience, is the sense of mystery. It is the source of any real art, of any real science. The one who has never felt this emotion, who has no gift for being amazed nor for being delighted, had better de dead: his eyes are shut. » (Albert Einstein )
These words, so strong in their humility, from one of the fathers of modern medicine, have recently sounded in my mind with a new echo : « I treated him, God cured him… »
I was trained as a psychotherapist and I had the privilege to receive , thanks to Line Sturny and Patrick Dacquay ,this prodigious tool that shamanic absorption is (the technique is described by Patrick in his book : Words from a Shaman grand -father to the Children and Grand children of the Earth , published by Guy Trédaniel-Vega. A technique which has given me since, the invaluable satisfaction of discovering its huge potential in the frame part of a psychotherapeutic practise.
A few years ago, a shamanic trip made me aware of the link to establish between my practise as a therapist of psychanalytic inspiration and the marvels of shamanism. Even if eveything remained blurred ever since, I had an astonishing dream which offered me this unprecedent opportunity to make a therapeutic junction,the most beneficial ever, between the two techniques : I know other discoveries are still awaiting, they will be the subject of other chapters …I also want to thank the people who attended the conference I had the opportunity to give in Dole, during the shamanic festival in April 2013, for
helping to arouse my awakening to the practise leading to this written work.
Since I was offered the space here, I’d like to deal with the first and really encouraging results I had, which are the fruit of the integration of Celtic shamanic absorption with the practise of psychotherapy of analytic type.
1/ TECHNIQUE OF ABSORPTION
a) DESCRIPTION
During a seance of psychotherapy, my head is linked to the ‘above’, it raises automatically, whereas my feet feel rooted down to the heart of mother-earth: so ,in the frame of the cure, the distance with floating attention spreads out, which allows to approach unconscious perception.
At this stage I add the shamanic technique of Absorption, in which I am inhabited by the energies coming from upper levels, and the miracle occurs.
The absorption of negative and other things that are difficult to name, on the
energetic level, but are simply physiopathological (microbes, blood system disorder and other undesirable organic elements ) is already a valuable benefit in itself- which is known by those who practise this technique – but it is the same with psychic Absorption .
-clean and free the necrosing psychological elements that are the memories of rape,incest ,maltreatment. 1
– – cut the hold of fusion and in the void uninhibited frame , reweave the archaic elements which blocked the subject’s psychic construction.
– give a sudden and new light or revive longing and declining therapies offering the opportunity to gather and make a complete synthesis of psychic elements which had not been integrated up to now.The most surprising is the quite immediate effect, here and now, as if it had been causally prepared, concretising the integration of a stage in the subject’s evolution,within the interaction and transferential interdependence of patient and therapist.The patient’s link with his affective environment is revived in a positive way, and rebuilt on sound bases, in the organisation of his emotional and cognitive field which had a breakdown.It is an inner flash on his resistances which rise whereas his pulsion for life is getting re-energized .
The modelling of the technique of Absorption gives me an increasing confidence in the
accompaniment of a patient.It is simple but it brings invaluable progress of integration of the disorganized elements of the analizer’s psyche : the elements gather suddenly,they are combined and get clearer. And it is a real happiness shared with the human being , as a patient , who suddenly gets free from his accompanier to be independent and free to follow his own way on rooted foundations. And it is a real comfort to work with more distance ,more efficiency and less weariness for the Psy , from the Other : at this stage I’m not alone any more, the help from ‘above ‘ is powerful ,efficient and quick , there , here and now, I apply both techniques, shamanic and psychoanalitic, in resonance into a symbiosis of the two ways distinct and interlaced.
Sending the energy caught by the healer is a powerful male position, unlike the Absorption in which I am : here, I am part of the one who inhabits me, I exist with him.
The patient ,as a KI receptor , is sometimes inhabited , loses the hold and lets the medicine man or woman of my superior lineage act -this is apparently unconscious to him.
Absorption gives security and confidence to the patient as well as to the healer, because agressivity doen’t affect him any more,it is absorbed.That’s why I can go towards the analysand without any apprehension,whereas he suddenly makes « lucid statements »
that would have been difficult, and even violent, to experience without Absorption:there he lets them occur as if he was securised without knowing it consciously, so this saves time ,with an enthusiastic confidence in a merry atmosphere.The transfer is more intense, more efficient, the analysand lets him enter it , completely safe.
The intensity of the cleaning to be done is automatically determined and run by the energy which inhabits me ,and seems to be proportional to the flow I can feel.For rapes for example,the intensity is different from victim to victim,it depends on the state of surpassing the agression and on the repression they reached.
The absorption time limits are also directly communicated to me : so, in psychosis, one has to take off a little at a time in order to prevent the subject from experiencing the void too suddenly. After speedy beginnings, resistance can settle as well as anxiety .
Nevertheless, unexpected progress invariably rise from archaism and surprise the analysands with the light they bring them.
b)HOW ABSORPTION BECOMES PART OF PSYCHOTHERAPIC PRACTICE
Together with my practise as an analyst ,the technique of absorption occurs in a total ‘lose -hold ‘, inhabited by a member of my family from ‘above’ who comes spontaneously or to my request when the analysand enters and gets settled.
The Absorption is done without my knowledge of its elements : the content absorbed in the patient only gets clearer afterwards through the patient’s regression or evolution ,as we will see in the vignettes, fragments of analysis or examples.
Absorption brings a feeling of contraction in my perception of linear time,which leads to a reduction of the treatment length, combined with positivity, efficiency, depth and a quick relief of the patient ‘s sufferings.
But above all, Absorption protects me from the patient’s violent or negative projections.
I can now look at him with distance in the happiness of the meeting with the healed subject heading towards a new stage.
Absorption is also wonderful when experienced with groups , whatever the number of people is:10,20,30 and even more !
The group or the analysand feels a kind of respect ,a sort of consideration for the therapist who is inhabited by Absorption , which is, then , something very different from an ordinary canal.
i)EFFECT IN TIME
It has to be checked on a longer term.Up to now the effect is immediate : it doesn’t only remain in time but the progress carries on, through justified resistances which suddenly decrease when reaching the end of the seance, whereas the flower of a new event springs out, the brilliant sentence , its author being unaware of the consequences…
Strangely, at the beginning of seances with absorption, analysands tell about past dreams in the’ here and now ‘,revealing significant memories that remained buried because they were too difficult to be faced.
2/ ALTHOUGH I’ M INHABITED , I REMAIN THE PSY, SUPPORT OF THE TRANSFER
The transfer still goes on, visible thanks to my distant countertransfer without any forceful direct hold of the analysand.The countertransfer gets easier to be lived ,to be integrated and so allows to go deeper, farther, faster : the analysand goes his own rythm, without having to consider unconsciously the therapist human limits, because he is welcome in his projections by whoever inhabits him – the resistances caused by the analyst vanish with the Absorption.
So,the work of free associations,with dreams in particular, goes on with an increasing efficiency, looking for Significants.
The patient’s traumatic sufferings and psychic miasmas are horizontally absorbed and transfered towards the inhabited therapyst who welcomes with a deep compassionate wisdom,in a state of modified vertical transpersonal conscience which enables to transmute these scorias and disolve them, without touching him, even if these traumas directly connect his own problematic ,already partly relieved by his personal analysis.
The transpersonal field is revealed by the Presence of Interior Silence you can feel through a soothing of disturbing emotions and feelings which motivated the patient ‘s request for healing.
So, the analytic thought, the countertransferential interior experience against the patient is still activally working and even gets increased under Absorption. Absorption
nourishes my intuitive perception of the Other in connection with my unconscious and reveals in my conscience field , when necessary, the significant element to bring in order to amplify the precision of the analysand ‘s delivery , interpretation being still at the patient’s service. The analysand himself, in most cases, brings the soothing word or sentence like in this recent example: « how can we be alone together » in a fusional couple continuously fighting against the grasp of one onto the other in the intimacy of the marriage bond.
3/ THE ARCHAIC : A WAY TO INFRAVERBAL
So, thanks to psychotherapy combined to absorption , we can reach what I call the complete sensorial « presence » containing the most primitive anxieties and injuries.
The infraverbal, the pre-specular experience (just before Lacan mirror stage ) is the shaman’s privileged territory . It is located, in its action, at the same time before and after
the mirror stage. Before in the wordless fusion with the whole – but not without any communication -, he is in a state of perception in which he can easily regress, but he is not psychotic, he got over the specular stage.The shaman, because of his construction after the stage, stands out of delirious perceptions, he has got his container, he contained his distance from the Other, he has got his access to the father’s law, to paternal function,
to symbolic, he can tell and write about his actions, and locate himself in a social position.
Thanks to his connection with earth and heaven, he is before and after specular , acting and being down-to-earth.This is what my lecture at Dole festival was about.
The clarification of archaism is allowed and accelarated and , so , it shortens the time of psychotherapies in which we reach the roots of the problem very quickly.(It pro- -tects us from what one could fear in terms of sectarian type of experience .)
There is of course,as I said , a multi-level association for the therapist of the simultaneity in the working processes :they are horizontal in the tranfer analysis,whereas they are vertical in the transpersonal presence which triggers intuition.
4/ CONCRETE EXPERIENCES
As analysts « we are taught by analysands » and, here , even more than before, without Absorption
a) RECOMMENDED FOR / INDICATIONS
The more traumas from the exterior the subject had, or the more psychotic he is, the more fruitful Absorption is.
For a neurotic , psychotherapy only is suitable , although some cleaning by Absorption could be useful but not determining, Absorption enables to bring back to life quickly archaic zones , aside from speech, and can even deal with foetal life, childbirth, through a complete sensorial « presence » containing the most primitive anxieties and injuries, nou-
shing in the subject his place in the world, in a dimension of eternity.
However,I don’t think Absorption can be used during the first seance.
b) SOME EXAMPLES OF PSYCHOTHERAPIC TREATMENTS WITH ABSORPTION
WHEN I AM A THERAPIST
1) with Eliane the improvements last in time .In her recent story she had the feeling
« she had cut her body in two parts , » at the waist level in order to protect the top part from the invasions of the bottom part ,the bottom having neither limits nor content, either for a sex or for a baby. Even if the belly had found its container, at last ,thanks to the help of the enveloping Mothers’ Mother , it remained empty, and then was crowded with destructive monsters. Suddenly the men place appears in the relational:an old father at last ! Supported by her mother and a protective brother who helped her going the way to her first and only conpanion .
Now, at last, she allows herself,feeling guilty, to have leisure, but she still fears hierarchical control .
But , above all, she can foresee the end of her therapy,the separation !
During the next seance , she brings a dream in which her whole body is spoken through experienced deseases, in the obvious content, that identify her to the ill mother of the beginning of her life , and to her healing father: dreaming, allowing herself to dream, she moves away from the risk of reproducing the bad experience in reality.
2)Denise is sterile and refuses to conceive a son who would please her father’s desire . He refuses her as a girl and would only accepts her if she became a mother and gave birth to a son.
Like her parents in the past who used to quarrel all the time , she quarrels with her husband:it is the family’s favourite way of communication but she doesn’t want her future child to suffer from the clashes of her couple.
Two in vitro fertilizations failed. A dream of a house is pictured, in obvious content,nonbearing walls associated in the latent content with non- subrogate mothers .
Describing a later dream, she makes a revealing slip by using the word « scissors » instead of « silo », associated to a grain silo which contains and nourrishes, whereas scissors cut from what is bad, invading , and protects her.
During the next seance she says : « I want to conceive a girl first in order to stand against my father who doesn’t allow girls to go out. »
Then after a new seance, under Absorption, she stops arguing with her husband for the first time… and she feels a void, she gets bored, she wants to do something with her life-partner, but not a child .
Note : the problem with these female patients is that they get cured so quickly that anxiety can spurt out suddendly .That’s why it is necessary to dose up the process of Absorption. But I can always feel the analysand ‘s happiness when leaving me with a touching grateful and respectful gaze , and obviously a finished work.
3)Perrine is marked by a fusional link to her mother,with a father who is relatively excluded. She repeats this link with her husband and her elder daughter with her , what makes her daughter feel very bad .
She evolves ,takes distance from her mother … from her husnand:they talk about getting divorced, the decision is nearly taken.
After one seance under Absorption focused on association about a dream, the inside/
the outside and the limit get printed in her. She goes out, finds a job, the reference being no longer the mother then the husband , but inside her. It seems to be hard for the husband to follow , although he is in a psychotherapy too , the couple himself being followed together.
Then the idea of a divorce vanishes , goes away.She stops her psychotherapy, the aim is reached.
4) For Irène and her baby the purpose is to re-establish the paternal function which is close to a more or less settled forclusion and related to three confused generations and probably even more previously.
She has just given birth, she is obsessional in Baby Blues and in getting contact again with a paternal function and her male lineage.
She is very close to her mother,nearly fusional, but the latter« gets on her nerves »
now and, after three seances, her baby is in the couple link, visible in his gaze going from one to the other, whereas before he was stupefied by his mother.
This third seance is nevertheless lived by the mother in an overwhelming anxiety:she calls for help, she wants to kill her baby who is fine and is getting separated from her ; she associates with the death of her brother whose mother never stopped mourning ; her husband ,really alive ,has got her dead brother’s name…Her mother, « perfect » came rushing as soon as she called,but « with my mother , death is coming » : she feels guilty of having taken distance from her mother so quickly, leaving her in void.
5) A…The surgeon was separating her from benign polyps and intrauterine myomas
which were filling the void and were recurring without making sense, he wasn’t cutting the fusional link to her mother’s uterus , cancerous at this time . Under maternal transfer and Absorption by divine feminity : the Mothers’ Mother ,the key sentence of her painful and ambivalent sterility sprang out : « if I have a baby ,my mother will die. »
6) A female patient in a failure behaviour : her mother is fusional with her,she has left her husband, the father to whom she didn’t leave any place .Then , suddenly,
during the Absorption : « my father is talking to me like a father to his daughter
and I,like to a father ».It is no longer question of her invading mother who rejected her as soon as she made a progress to separate from her.
But « I have no desire » she says, not yet, there is still a way to go on .
7) Marine’s mother , always pregnant or recently delivered, is expecting her fourth child,I fill in the young lady with Absorption ,in order to avoid the repetition and the future fusion mother-child together with the exclusion of the father.She feels preventively at a distance from the expected child.
8) Sabine,a nurse who suffered from maltreatment during her childhood, unprotec-
ted ,doesn’t protect herself from psychotic patients in her hospital : treatment to be done by the Mothers’ Mother and Absorption of her past maltreaments.
9) Line ,whose psychic got structured along a development marked by the fusion with her twin sister,managed, after a seance under Absorption, to buid a different image of the double ,the other twin, first attributed by birth and set by society, and who becomes her husband, her half .
10) Simone, raped by her grandfather, finds at last a man’s protection but can’t still bear sexual life : « the shame of experienced forbidden pleasure » invades her personal life .
11) Nicole, raped by her father, intensely finds her protective mother again.
12) Arlette brings a childhood memory. Aged 4, she is watching « Alice in Wonder-
-land » and shouts when the rabbit enters the endless burrow:the association is made with the uterus unblocked by the father, so she goes back to her birth,and there, her father suddenly intervenes in the reconstructed memory when he takes a photo of her. . During the following seance the impossible cut comes on stage, the umbilical cord.
Her already started divorce suddenly sets place to a n unbearable seance of humiliation :
her mother decompensates and is taken to hospital, which seems to answer Arlette’s sud-den liberation from her mother.The cord is cut , but the impossible cut was made on both sides.
Note : the effect is spectacular among many patients who are suddenly relieved:with the conquest of the distance to the other, spouse or parent inducting an invading fusion, they plan to concieve a child, decide to legalize their union, or to separate from a psychotic spouse.
13) Now to finish with: this example deals with an ending through coupling and condensation of the different elements in only one session, under Absorption.
For Christine, it is the sudden outcome of more than fifteen years of adult therapy ,taking over a childhood followed by a CMP for serious psychosis.
Under Absorption , the outcome springs at last: the session seems to start like the others,
fusion with her companion, intolerance to frustration when he goes out or has a good time with friends, « I experience abandonment – before I would have agressed him,
now I make the link with my fusional father, as well as my mother ,-and I wait for him. »
It is always the same leimotiv : « I have no knowledge ( I haven’ got my father’s phallus), my father blames me for it. » ( infantile psychosis blocked the access to symbolism, she had never been able to learn at school.)
Then, she suddenly tells two extraodinary dreams : 1/ « my parents are making love , but I am in my mother’s place », 2/ She dreams about her younger brother’s assassination.
Because she was fusional to both of her parents,the coming of a younger brother couldn’t be accepted, it symbolized her own death…her place was all or nothing. But she manages to project her saving fantasy : her brother’s murder which allows at the same time to open the field to her own perpetuation : and Cain killed Abel… Her brother was the only third element that cut the double fusion, he had become integrable…Now, at last , she manages to take distance with her father.
Before ending ,I would like to mention a shamanic technique, among others to
heal patients : in mourning ,for example :making the dead go further up to his destiny, freeing the dead from his terrestrial links, making the mourning -work easier for his relatives. This technique is easy and fast and , the more sudden the death is, the more necessary and efficient it is .
Other shamanic techniques : working on cell memories, which stick on to a previous life or previous lives, open the door to unconsciously experienced repetitions. Here is a simple example : a young lady ,aged 40, keeps a phobia about cars; she discovers her death , in a previous life , in a car accident, a breathtaking fall from a cliff in a car . The memory cleaning sweeps away this phobia by healing this death. One séance only !
But, nevertheless, two seances , and the most frequently three,are necessary to absorb and overcome violence or maltreatment. But here again,how much time is won !
Absorption is such a wealth ! Associated to psychotherapy of analytic type,the therapist can offer the patient , asking for treatment , a much more performing tool , a reinforcement of the analytic technique which becomes more constructive thanks to the
accelaration of a healing process which was made deeper. As far as the therapist is concerned, a reassuring therapeutic climate opens to him, whith the unique distanciation obtained thanks to this strong third coming from Above or Below .The work is done in a fabulous respectful climate, a distance to renewed rightness, and ,moreover ,the unique happiness of being more efficient at helping the Other.
May this modest contribution bring this invaluable technique in light , so that it can help many other therapists and their patients , and may Freud’ s famous phrase about psychoanalysis « holistic healing by extra » be lit for them by a new day .
Thanks to Patrice C for his brilliant help with the text setting
Thanks to Martine L for her translation into English
