When the psyche is overloaded with impulses that it cannot integrate, the response is disconnection. As when an electric current is overcharged, the fuse blows. In trauma, in the brain, there is a disconnection, like a blown fuse.

Two zones of the brain become disconnected, the amygdala retains the conscious experience and the hippocamp retains the unconscious image of the situation, but they remain disconnected and function in the psyche separately and autonomously.

 People spend years in therapy and wonder why traumatic situations are not resolved. The reason is that the unconscious integration of the trauma remains intact. Jung preconizes integrating the two aspects; the conscious and the unconscious into one whole. Then what he calls “transcendence” from one state to another can take place. Trauma becomes… just a story, the affect is remodeled. However, it requires training, as well as focus and attention on the processes in the unconscious.

 Jung states; “With the unconscious and conscious standpoints the confrontation of the two positions generates a tension charged with energy and creates a living third thing, not a logical stillbirth … but a movement out of the suspension between the opposites, a living birth that leads to a new level of being, a new situation.” Carl Jung, CW Vol.8, P.90, pp89

 For Jung, “The treatment of neurosis is not a kind of psychological water cure, but a renewal of the personality, working in every direction and penetrating every sphere of life.”  CW Vol. 8, P. 88 pp 184

 One needs to learn; the psyche is auto-regulating, auto-healing. The psyche seeks wholeness and wholeness is beyond trauma!

Patricia Anne Elwood