Shamanic Dimensions of Psychotherapy: Healing Through the Symbolic Process

257 Pages·2020·2.304 MB·English

by  Robin van Löben Sels

‘In Shamanic Dimensions of Psychotherapy, Robin van Löben Sels artfully
weaves together personal narrative and clinical experience, along with threads
from art, poetry, literature, analytical psychology, and psychoanalytic theory, to
articulate the shamanic elements underpinning the psychotherapy experience.
However, this volume is not a dry, academic treatise on shamanism. Throughout
the volume, van Löben Sels reveals how the “shamanic complex” functions to
facilitate healing in the space created between therapist and patient. In addition
to having significant implications for the practicing psychotherapist, her careful
and astute articulation of “shamanic attributes” might well serve as a template for
the practice of conscious living. Rather than simply explaining shamanism, van
Löben Sels utilizes the patterns found in shamanism as a means of amplifying
important elements of life and the depth of the therapeutic encounter. Shamanic
Dimensions is an important and satisfying contribution to our understanding of
shamanistic experience, depth psychology, and the unfolding of life.’
– Mark Winborn, PhD, NCPsyA, Jungian psychoanalyst,
psychologist, and author of Interpretation in Jungian
Analysis: Art and Technique
‘Robin van Löben Sels has the rare gift of being able to capture with words our
primary, felt experiences that often have an ineffable quality and, as such, elude
verbal description. In this poetic and evocative book, van Löben Sels provides us
with anthropological, clinical, and personal descriptions that illustrate, as well as
evoke, aspects of the shaman archetype and its operation in the therapeutic situa-
tion – especially in the form of the seven shamanic attributes she explores. To pay
attention to these attributes is to work mostly at the level of what is non-conscious
yet experienced and manifested bodily; it is to be present to the language of sen-
sations and is foundational to moving towards ego consciousness and a growing
capacity to name one’s experience – what the author calls a yoga of consciousness.
As I read her book, I was repeatedly aware of links between her shamanic
attributes and the work of current neuroscientists such as Schore, Damasio, and
Porges; as well as infant researchers such as Stern, Trevarthan, and Reddy. Her
emphasis on the physical/somatic attributes of the shaman also link with somatic
therapies such as authentic movement, dance therapy, art therapy, and the somatic
psychotherapies of Somatic Experiencing, Hakomi, and Somatic Transformation.
More specifically, van Löben Sels’s seven attributes have a natural deep link to
the seven archetypal affective systems that neuroscientist Jaak Panksepp suggests
are the “ancient ancestral wisdom” of humans, and indeed all mammals. Both the
shamanic attributes and the affective systems are core, essential components of
our moment-to-moment experience through our nonverbal, implicit system. The
depths of primary and secondary shamanic experience are multi-dimensional, and
if you want to explore the full noetic reality of shamanic experience, this magi-
cally lyrical and well-grounded book is a must read.’
– Julie Kilpatrick, MD, Jungian psychoanalyst and
educator of attachment theory and
affective neuroscience

Shamanic Dimensions of
Psychotherapy
In Shamanic Dimensions of Psychotherapy: Healing through the Symbolic
Process, Robin van Löben Sels uniquely and honestly recounts her personal
journey toward a shamanic understanding of psychotherapy. Exploring the
disruptive breakthrough of visions and dreams that occurred during her analysis,
personal life, and psychoanalytic training, van Löben Sels illustrates how the
phenomenology of ancient shamanism is still alive and how it is a paradigm for
the emergence and maturation of the psyche in people today.
This original book delves into van Löben Sels’s personal experience of the
shaman, identifying such eruptions as a contemporary version of the archaic
shaman’s initiatory call to vocation. The book is split into two parts. It begins by
outlining the shamanic personality in history, recognizing this as an individual
that has been called out of a collectively sanctioned identity into a creative life,
and the unconscious shaman complex they consequently face, especially in
psychotherapeutic relationships. Practical as well as theoretical, the second part
outlines the shamanic attributes that underline psychotherapeutic relationships –
silence, sound, mask, rhythm, gesture, movement, and respiration – and usefully
describes how to use them as asanas for consciousness, or vehicles toward
psychological awareness. With clinical examples and personal stories throughout,
this book’s unique Jungian perspective addresses contemporary expressions of the
shaman complex in our current world.
Shamanic Dimensions of Psychotherapy: Healing through the Symbolic
Process will be essential reading for Jungian analysts and psychotherapists in
practice and in training, as well as for academics and students of Jungian and post-
Jungian studies. It will be especially helpful and illuminating to those who have
experienced an involuntary plunge into the depths and who seek ways to articulate
their experience.
Robin van Löben Sels, PhD, is a Jungian analyst teaching and consulting in New
Mexico, USA. She is the author of A Dream in the World: Poetics of Soul in Two
Women, Modern and Medieval (Routledge, 2003) and has written several other
books and poetry.

Shamanic Dimensions of
Psychotherapy
Healing through the
Symbolic Process
Robin van Löben Sels
First published 2020
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2020 Robin van Löben Sels
The right of Robin van Löben Sels to be identified as author of
this work has been asserted by him/her/them in accordance with
sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted
or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic,
mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented,
including photocopying and recording, or in any information
storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from
the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks
or registered trademarks and are used only for identification and
explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record for this book has been requested
ISBN: 978-1-138-09571-7 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-138-09572-4 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-10558-1 (ebk)
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