Images as energy carriers

"The ability to generate images and relate to them is a measure of mental health." I would love to see that thought on the wall of every therapist, physician and healthcare practitioner. It is simple, sharp-edged truth. It comes from an important new book by Yoram Kaufmann titled The Way of the Image. [1] Here's more of what we need to know, and to make an integral part of healing:

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One could construct a nosology [2] of psychology based on the facility with which a person is able to let images bubble up from their unconscious. In true depression, for instance, there is marked constriction of the ability to produce images. Obsession, or addiction, can be seen as a fixation on one image (or set of images), as the bulimic is fixated on the image of the thin body, or the fetishist is fixated on the high-heeled shoe. Boredom, which is an attentuated form of depression, is also a temporary suspension of the spontaneity of images. This ability is so vital to us that its blockage can lead to suicide.

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In his respected career as a psychoanalyst, Kaufmann devoted himself to helping to release the energy and objective meaning of images. He views images as energy delivery systems. The more we learn from current research in mind-body medicine about the power of imagery to bring us down or make us well, the easier we'll find it to agree that our task, in the presence of an image, is to help the energy carrier do its rightful work. For Kaufmann, this requires getting to the meaning of an image, not by "interpreting" it to mean something other than what it is, but by "translating" it so it can operate in the contexts where it is needed.-

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Kaufmann takes a "just so" view of the images produced in dreams. "The image is not there to hide anything, but to reveal, to bring to light." True to Jung, he counsels against the "classic" Freudian method of encouraging the patient to embark on lengthy free association, noting that this can lead far from the specific and fresh-minted truth of an image, into thickets of self-masking and evasion. The trick is to let the image reveal itself. This requires us to be faithful to the material. Let's start by assuming that a dream image means what it says. Instead of looking for hidden meanings, let's check out the objective facts about that image.

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Kaufmann's practice is to look at dreams on both the "object" and the "subject" level. The "object", or interpersonal, level, treats all dream figures and situations as referring to actual people, objects and events in the dreamer's life. When dreams are viewed on the "subject" level, all the elements are treated as "partial inner aspects" of the dreamer. Kaufmann offers the salutary advice that "as a matter of clinical practice, it is dangerous to bypass immediately the object level and shoot for the subject level" as if external reality does not exist.

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David Rottman, who is Kaufmann's publisher as well as the president of the C.G. Jung Foundation of New York, gives a wonderful example of the practice of the "orientational" approach. Someone dreams that his boss is a skunk. We might think we know what that dream is saying, that the boss is a stinker. But notice what happens when we do a little research and discover that, contrary to his reputation, the skunk isn't a willing stinker. Before he lets off his odor bomb, he'll give warning signals that you shouldn't bother him, like growling and tail-twitching. Once we've learned this useful information about the skunk, maybe we can apply it to the dreamer's job situation and come up with a very practical application. The action statement to be derived might be: watch out for warning signs from the boss to avoid a big stink.

As in this example, studying the objective dimension of an image - what Kaufmann terms the "orient" - is central to this approach, which requires more than study, because every dream is a call to action. I would love to see both analysts and dreamworkers everywhere orient to the objective meaning of images in this way. We stand to gain immensely by following the specific clues in a dream, in the manner of sensitive detectives, rather than muddying the evidence or trampling it down under standard-issue analytical boots.

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Following the "orient" of what lives in the physical world, whether a skunk's warning display or the structure of a piano, is fairly straightforward - if we remember to look beyond our first associations. But does this method also apply to the creatures of psychic reality, to dragons or angels? Kaufmann insists that it does, and gives an example in an essay on angels. A woman patient gives a one-line dream report, describing an angel hovering between earth and sky. Those who know the meaning of the word angelos might observe that there is an important "messenger" in the dream. But Kaufmann wants us to go further, by recalling, to begin with, that when we look at the attributes of angels, we find that they tend to govern specific territories, and represent laws and patterns of energy that precede us. It's helpful, of course, to know what angel is in play. I often refer to the Library Angel, that excellent spirit that makes books turn up in unexpected and significant ways, but I learned from Kaufmann than in Hebrew the Library Angel has a name: Harahel.

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Perhaps it's his influence that is orienting me to think about applying the Kaufmann approach to words that he and his publisher use. The English word "orient" derives - a long way back - from the Latin orientum, the East in the sense of the place of the rising light. To orient or seek orientation is to get our bearings, turning back towards the place of light. Though Kaufmann's usage of the word is idiosyncratic, it does relate to finding the right direction and turning towards the light. The name of his publisher, Zahav, means "gold" in Hebrew, and I think there is gold in this book.

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I am struck by the depth of love and respect Yoram Kaufmann inspired among fellow-analysts I respect, especially in the Jungian community. He was born in the land of Israel before it became a state; he died last summer. He liked to say that though he could not speak with authority about reincarnation as rebirth in a different body, he did believe in the possibility that we can reincarnate ourselves within our present lifetimes, and I agree with that profoundly.

NOTES

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1. Yoram Kaufmann, The Way of the Image: The Orientational Approach to the Psyche (New York: Zahav Books, 2009) may be ordered direct from the publisher: www.zahavbooks.com. The website also contains a biography of Yoram Kaufmann, testimonials, and a radio interview with David Rottman on his work.

2. "Nosology" relates to a field of medical science every patient, as well as every doctor, needs to examine closely: the classification of diseases. (Nosos is the Greek word for "disease"). Diseases are classified by their cause (etiology), their supposed origin (pathogenesis), by their symptoms or by the name of the organ affected. We often hear of complaints that are named after a person who suffered from a certain set of symptoms whose origin and cause is not understood - and whose treatment may be equally uncertain. One of the gifts of dreaming and active imagination is that we are given fresh ways of seeing and naming our dis-eases. Kaufmann's suggestion that we construct a nosology based on the patient's relationship with images is inspired.