Botswana, Safari 2007, by Heike Weis Hyder: ‘Encounter’

Botswana, Safari 2007, by Heike Weis Hyder: ‘Encounter’

The Symbolic Life

IAAP Worldcongress 2010 Montreal presentation of Heike Weis Hyder, Switzerland:

Article by Heike Weis Hyder

„God exists! This story is true!”

Citation from an African man transplanted through the storm of genocide far away from his people, his culture and his language and from his soul.

The deep meaning and function of symbols was once again proved to me through the encounter with an African patient from Rwanda, who was deeply traumatized during the genocide in 1994. This man’s story is a moving testament to the human spirit and how it gets support from the “transcendent” in moments of live danger and in the face of immense loss. His experience and the therapeutically process witnesses that behind chaos and destruction seems to be a “generator” for the restructuration and evolution of the psyche.

The value of understanding archetypal energies and symbols unfolds in the progressive discovery of the psychic strength to reconnect with life. An important precondition is that patient and therapist undergo together a process of confrontation and acceptance of the different aspects of the soul, and at least a deep transformation and differentiation of the feeling function, which seems extremely important for the healing course.

The analytical process, ongoing since six years, demonstrates through life events and dreams, that Jung’s theories seem largely confirmed and provide an “instrument” to dialogue with a complete stranger. The main bridge-building elements are the symbols and their consideration in the vessel of the therapeutically relationship. Important psycho dynamical movements in the individual are expressed through symbols. They indicate the possible support from implicit information’s in the brain in moments of total stress and represent the actual transforming essence, status and direction of development. 

Pierre was born in 1958 in Kigali, the capital of Rwanda. He has grown up as a Hutu in an emotionally and financially security. Besides being a car technician, he loved to play guitar and composed music. In his twenties he married and had a daughter and a son. They lived in the neighbourhood of his parents in their own house. His father was a catholic priest and very respected among his people. The relationship with the members of his family was relatively good. He lived a “normal life”, without being very religious, until the ethnic turmoil and genocide in 1994.

The life of Pierre changed suddenly, when he saw his parents, sisters and brothers decapitated from extreme Hutus, because his family was not supporting them against the Tootsies. He could escape, just so two brothers, but lost their trace, like of his wife and children. There was no chance in this chaos to be informed. Former musician friends helped him in July 1994 to come to Geneva. Nearly one and a half year after his arrival in Switzerland he saw his son at TV-news in a refugee-camp. He was so moved, that he decided to go back to Rwanda in spite the threat against his live in his home country.

In September 1995 he was back in Rwanda and directly imprisoned because of insinuation for espionage. Over several months he was tortured several times nearly to death. During the torturing hours he had for the first time in his live visions from the ‘Virgin’. She spoke to him with hope and peace. This presence helped him to endure the pain and fear. He witnessed in himself a beginning process for forgiveness towards the murderers of his family.

Visions and dreams opened a new state of mind in him, from which he was profoundly touched. It helped him further to accept the idea that he would be killed through the extreme brutal circumstances. After a deep vision of ‘Maria’ he was suddenly and surprisingly liberated. Physically he was very week, but mentally he was strengthened through the symbolic experience.

After some months of research he found first his son in a camp and later even his wife with their daughter. They were reunited in another refugee-camp, but deeply happy to be together. The conditions in this camp became finally so miserable, that they decided to leave together with more than hundred other refugees. All together they were walking more than over seven months through the jungle. On the third day his son was bitten to death from a snake. Pierre could mentally support this tragedy because of the dreams and visions of the Virgin and Christ, which he had in prison. He often visualized a blue light, which gave him the feeling of the divine presence and consolation. After the death of his son at the age of seven they found themselves in a wandering through the forest, being exposed to extreme human dramas. Coming out of the jungle there were only around thirty people who had survived. They were gathered in a military-camp with better conditions than before. But after some political changes Pierre would have been forced to fight in a war beside children soldiers. He spoke to his wife and they fled from this camp at the end of 1999. They could hide in a friend’s house. Finally they decided that Pierre would go back to Switzerland and organize from there the transfer for his wife and daughter.

End of January 2000 he arrived completely ill with Malaria and psychologically weekend in Zürich. A second time he asked for right of sanctuary. The first weeks after his arrival he was optimistic to bring his family over. It came different. Pierre had to confront another drama: in spring 2000 his wife and daughter were abducted from the military. The foster family had no idea where they had been brought or if they had been killed. In the first months Pierre began an intense research through official organisations. Their trace stayed lost. The failure provoked a dangerous decline of Pierre’s health. He stayed in his apartment in one dark room for days and weeks. Panic attacks and fear increased to an unsupportable degree. He developed acoustic and optic hallucinations beside horrible nightmares for the first time. Socially he was totally isolated. Frequently he was invaded from traumatic experiences and guilt to have survived. Pierre was highly suicidal. 

At this extreme point Pierre was send to me for therapy, because I speak French. I listened to his story, which touched me deeply. In the same time I asked myself how I could ever help him. It seemed that he felt my impotence, because he told me simply that I will be the last wideness of his destiny and that he is thankful for that. A profound humility was unfolding in me and I think between us. It was the beginning of our intense human relationship. 

Until our meeting he tried to survive through regular visits in the church. Once he asked the priest to come to his home for a blessing, because of the overwhelming voices he experienced. With a big smile Pierre told that afterwards the voices were even more intense. This was the entrance of a new resource: humour! He was sure that I could help him better than the priest. I wasn’t. Suddenly I had the idea to ask him what his mother would have done against bad spirits. She was initiated in voodoo practices. Pierre remembered that she used salt in the corner of the house. I advised him to do the same. The voices disappeared in one week. At this moment Pierre told me the sentence of the citation above: “God exists! This story is true.” I was more than surprised, but we were happy about this result. The voices of his torturers never came back, but the nightmares increased for several month.

A depressive syndrome was present, but through the transference it was supportable for Pierre. Very fast he began to write down his dreams and experienced that it was very helpful to do so and to share the dreams. He realized the compensatory function of the psyche, because of the helpful symbols appearing during his imprisonment and the nightmares increasing during his ‘safe life’ in Switzerland. The “dark” dreams treated the genocide and the brutal loss of his family through images of a blood sea with dead human bodies floating. There were a lot of repetitive elements. I invited Pierre to be attentive to the details. He took all his courage and collected every dream part.

The vale of his depression disappeared after a dream in which wonderful blue birds raised out of the blood sea and were flying towards the sun. Pierre experienced this as the “going home” for the souls of his dead people. His feeling of guilt was diminishing. In the following Pierre had a “banal” dream, so he called it first. He followed his wife in the jungle and than she disappeared suddenly. At her place appeared a blue and exeptional big butterfly. He felt very attracted and profoundly touched. The butterfly sat down on his left hand. Pierre felt a deep connection. After this dream we realized that he began to connect better with the outside life. Further he cared much better for himself and progressively took contact with people from Rwanda in Geneva.  

The therapeutically process is full of symbolic life experiences and they cannot be explained here in detail. The therapy sessions have an additional pedagogical function in helping Pierre to integrate in Europe. 

The sharing, mirroring and symbolising moments seem to repair the psychological damage. Since the last year it became evident that a new level of consciousness is unfolding. Pierre is experiencing a state of being like a “newborn”. He feels strengths for living and connecting with others like he never felt before. The ‘religious function’ of his psyche seems obviously the most powerful in its symbolic expressions. Deep emotions are triggered in both of us and push the feeling functions to differentiate. The different symbols mirror that the self is conducting reparation from the trauma and at the same time bring up new implicit information’s which are received in a felt sense.

The symbols rearrange and re-associate live seeds even before the therapy, but this effect is highly increased through the conscious work with dreams and through the transference in the therapeutically relation. A very special discovery was the fact, that there were experienced symbols of the self like in visions of the Christ and the blue Virgin, which triggered the process of forgiveness. So Pierre was able to forgive truly the murderers of his family. Forgiveness and humility have become integrated aspects of his psyche and give him the power to confront everyday life and to feel liberated from the past. Pierre himself says: “I entered therapy KO. I leave each time more OK.”

The work with symbols appearing in dreams, in visions and in the therapeutically relationship, beside the awareness of relational aspects of the analytical experience are the two of the most important factors which can bring about change.

The capacity “to produce” symbols can be blocked through trauma or even be triggered in extreme stress situations. Also silence can be an ambiguous stimulus that activates systems of implicit memory in form of various symbols.  

Neurosciences revealed that the unsymbolised traumatic experiences, with a primitive core of unspeakable terror, intrusive ideation, and somatic sensations that exist cordoned off within the patients psyche, are unavailable to self-reflective processes and the traditional talking cure. This screaming core of a wounded human being, often protected behind the semblance of a functioning, adaptive interpersonally related self, can only be reached through the engaged, warm looking and the holding from an analyst with good enough parenting and self-aware capacities.

The power of this “holding” environment is able to promote repeated positive experiences of neural connections over time, which build and rebuild attachments within the patient towards the self and with the other outside. This constructive process becomes visible and healing through the symbols, which transform unconscious, implicit information in an explicit form, experienced together in the analytical dyad.

The emotional link and the felt sense triggered through symbols and mirrored by the analyst, are most effective in building up the personality and able to heal important wounds of the soul, because the metaphors light up multiple centres in the brain enabling increased connectivity. So assimilation as a mutual penetration of consciousness and unconsciousness can take place.

Consciousness itself may be understood as the connectivity established in the individual brain. Symbols and transference experience are the essence of this connection building process, so that the internalisation of space, mobility, separateness and felt connectivity can occur, which proves that the subject is able in participating in its becoming and its healing.