Wholeness and the Therapeutic Journey

Perhaps the first and only time we human beings experience ourselves as fully embodied and whole is when we take shape in our mother’s womb. Our subsequent entry into the world is announced with a cry and with a supplication. Our cry acknowledges that the world preceded us and that we are, essentially, at its mercy. With our arms outstretched, our supplication is a plea for us to be held--that a tender embrace warms and protects and invites us to unfold and to become ourselves. We then wander through the world searching for our place in it, perhaps seeking that pre-ontological sense of wholeness that lingers only as a slight trace in our imagination. Along the way, we may meet catastrophe—the trauma and tragedy of life that further separates and fragments. Our ‘potential space’ is thus foreclosed, and the possibility of our becoming “ensouled” recedes. We are left instead splintered, taken over by a tyrannical inner voice that condemns and that incites the repetition of our suffering.

Dante’s journey through the Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso teaches us that in order to climb the heights of our possibilities we must first descend into darkness. There, if we’re lucky enough to have the right kind of guide, we can meet our suffering face-to-face, open ourselves to it in a new way, honor it, and, by so doing, transform it. The ways we have deceived ourselves begin to slowly appear and the veil cloaking our complicity in our own misery can be lifted. Mourning begins. We roam the wilderness for a while. We find a truth that guides; we accept forgiveness. And, in our finite freedom, we inaugurate a new, more authentic subjectivity.

In the end, Dante’s poignant poetic verse images for us the arrival in ‘Paradise’ not as an entrance into a spatiotemporal location but, instead, as the experience of con-version. We enter Paradise when we work to turn right-side up that which we have inverted or that has been inverted for us.  He suggests that ‘Paradise’ is actually the stepping into a new existential-hermeneutic state of being—a state where pride is supplanted by humility, despair by hope, self-condemnation by grace, and fear by love. And with this new spirit toward reality, the answers to the questions: “Who am I?” and “How am I to live?” take care of themselves.

Join us in Gubbio this summer for a psychoanalytic-existential reading of Dante’s Divine Comedy. Be part of our conversation as we endeavor to unearth and explore the therapeutic principles masterfully nestled in Dante’s epic poetic gift. Let Dante’s insights help reorient us to our own journey so that we may better make the way for that of our patients.

Come join us this summer in Gubbio. Dive deep with us. Be amazed by the adventure. Don’t miss out!