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Insead Faculty & Research Working Paper The Shaman, the Therapist, and the Coach _______________ Manfred F. R. KETS de VRIES 2014/54/EFE The Shaman, the Therapist, and the Coach Manfred F. R. Kets de Vries* * Distinguished Professor of Leadership Development and Organizational Change at INSEAD, Boulevard de Constance, 77305 Fontainebleau Cedex, France. Email: [email protected] A Working Paper is the author’s intellectual property. It is intended as a means to promote research to interested readers. Its content should not be copied or hosted on any server without written permission from [email protected] Find more INSEAD papers at http://www.insead.edu/facultyresearch/research/search_papers.cfm Abstract In this article I discuss various similarities and differences between the healing practices of shamans and the work of therapists and executive coaches. I also explore the extent to which the shamanic perspective can contribute to contemporary psychotherapy and executive coaching. I conjecture that it is important to recapture humankind’s phylogenetic patterns in our present-day “rational” world, if we are to tackle the increasing alienation of humankind. I suggest that the shamanic worldview does not differ greatly from that of the founders of depth psychology, Freud and Jung. While shamans are involved in “soul retrieval,” contemporary psychoanalysts, dynamic psychotherapists and many executive coaches are engaged in “self-retrieval.” In addition, reviewing Jung’s writing, I make a number of observations about the collective unconscious, mystical experiences, spiritual healing practices, active imagination, and visualizing. I raise the question whether contemporary psychotherapists and executive coaches realize the extent to which they are following in the footsteps of their shamanic predecessors. Furthermore, in this paper I also address the question whether the shamanic, more holistic perspective will help humankind to reduce their sense of rootlessness. Key words: Shamanism; Psychotherapy; Coaching; Depth Psychology; Collective Unconscious; Archetypes; Mystical Experiences; the Sacred; Active Imagination; Visualizing; Journey. 2 “… The experiences that are called ‘visions,’ the whole so-called ‘spirit world,’ death, all those things that are so closely akin to us, have by daily parrying been so crowded out of life that the senses with which we could have grasped them are atrophied.” ——Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet “If you enter into the world of soul, you are like a madman” —Carl Jung, The Red Book Introduction In a world that is changing ever faster, it’s not difficult to become alienated, that is, to experience a disconnect between ourselves and others, our social and our work environments and, at a fundamental level, the natural world we live in. Many of the presenting problems that psychotherapists and executive coaches encounter have this element of alienation at their core, negatively affecting their clients’ sense of self, ability to function, and potential for happiness. In post-industrial society, we have become increasingly estranged from the vast hinterland of our evolutionary human history. Yet civilization (as we know it) has only been around for a very limited amount of time. Some people have even suggested that if we take a time scale whereby the Earth was formed only a year ago, we appeared as a species less than 12 minutes ago, began farming a little over one minute ago, witnessed the Industrial Revolution less than 2 seconds ago, began using computers 0.4 seconds ago, and the Internet less then 0.1 seconds ago. From this perspective, we can see how bonded we are to nature, as a species, and for how long. Behind the thin veneer of our civilization, much of our primitive nature remains. All our rationality notwithstanding, our understanding of the exigencies of our lives has remained fairly limited. We continue to struggle with alienation in contemporary society. Often the result of psychological trauma, alienation can also be triggered by our increasing physical mobility. Migration and deracination induce different forms of stress, with the loss of the familiar, and disruption in cultural norms, language, religious customs, and social support systems. This form of cultural bereavement 3 impacts on our mental well-being. During our prehistoric beginnings, shamanism took root among people who lived in an intimate relationship with the Earth. However, the price we have paid our evolutionary history has been our increasing estrangement from the Earth and its natural forces. This disruption has contributed to our alienation from our emotional and psychological roots and has also led us to endanger the survival of our planet. With the realization of the Earth’s fragility, there has been increasing awareness of the need for rebuild our connection with the living world. Consciousness of this has inspired a strong resurgent interest in the cultures of contemporary primitive peoples who still practice shamanism, which has also become a growing, if cultish, practice in the western world. In this article I point to a continuity in orientations in the helping professions and look at the similarities and differences in the healing practices of shamans compared to psychotherapists and executive coaches. Have contemporary therapists and coaches anything to learn from the ancient ways of the shaman? Generally speaking, psychology and psychiatry have not dealt with shamans very well, however, often dismissing them as mentally or neurologically deranged. But is it possible that in our “rational” society, recapturing our phylogenetic patterns could help us tackle the increasing alienation of humankind? Could we, by incorporating aspects of the shamanic perspective, reduce our sense of rootlessness? Could shamans help make us more sensitive to the ecological forces that threaten our planet today? Shamans represent one of the oldest continuous ways of human sense-making. The origins of shamanism are prehistoric, represented in oral traditions developed over tens of thousands of years (Lewis-Williams, 2004). Their practices situated humans in a world in which everything animate and inanimate—all animals, growing things, landscape features, and weather systems—was an individual entity. For millennia, shamans held a central position as healers within the living body of the Earth, understanding how a change in one part of an ecosystem might affect all the other parts. 4 Shamanism is considered the world’s most ancient spiritual healing practice (Eliade, 1972; Harner, 1980; Hutton, 2001; Graham, 2003; Pratt, 2007). It is still practiced around the globe by indigenous peoples such as the Sami (Lapps) of northern Europe, the Inuit of Greenland, the Ainu, Evenks, Altaians, and Buryats of the northern parts of Asia, the Aborigines of Australia, the Kung Bushmen of southern Africa, and the native North and South Americans. Ancient as shamanic practices may be, with the passing of the centuries primal belief systems and native cultures have been diminished or displaced by the spread of the great missionary religions of Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam. This has led to the near extinction of the indigenous shamans, and the loss of much of their knowledge (Kehoe, 2000). Contemporary practitioners have found it difficult to accept “irrational” shamanic practices. Altered-state experiences are regarded as mysterious, paranormal, or even pathological when compared to today’s scientific and rational healing approach. This is unfortunate, because shamans (like therapists and coaches) have always been committed to the mental and physical health of their people. All practitioners in the helping professions are involved in the reconstruction and well-being of the human psyche and shamans are no exception. However, shamans do not relegate psychic difficulties to the realm of the unconscious or repressed memories. They believe that parts of the soul are free to leave the body and that illnesses derive from split-off parts of the self that lodge in a kind of parallel universe. These splits occur while we dream, or when we protect ourselves from potentially damaging emotional or physical situations. Trauma might prevent these split-off parts of the soul from returning to the body. People feel depressed, lonely, bored, fearful, manic, or anxiety-ridden as they try to reintegrate their soul. Their search might lead them into other relationships, addictive behavior, or religious sects, all of which may prove to be inadequate. People who subscribe to this belief may need the help of a shaman to restore the soul’s essence (Hultkrantz, 1985; Halifax, 1991; Ingerman, 2004). The shaman comes to the rescue as a communicator between those split-off parts and the main body of consciousness, and ultimately as a soul retriever. In contrast, psychotherapists and executive coaches also engage in a form of soul retrieval, although their work can better be described as “self-retrieval”: the retrieval of the self, by the self. 5 Shamans From the earliest days of our human history, shamans have provided us with a direct and experiential connection to a naturalistic, spiritual world (Levi-Strauss, 1962, 1963 Campbell, 1976, 2004). They have helped us to elucidate where, why, or how we fit into the general scheme of things—what our place is in the cosmos. Shamans presented life as a partnership between the dead, the living, and the unborn. They were the original eco-psychologists, pointing out the need for environmental reciprocity for the healing of humans, animals
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