Primal Wound : A Transpersonal View of Trauma, Addiction, and Growth

Argues that a primal wounding of the human spirit occurs in earliest human life that disrupts fundamental relationships and leads to anxiety, loneliness, and alienation; and shows how this wounding can be redeemed through therapy and through living one's life differently.

To many of us, modern life is a headlong rush to avoid dark feelings that threaten to disrupt our lives at every turn. In order to block the surging tide of this hidden level of experience, we become enthralled with violence, sex, and mass media and addicted to alcohol, drugs, and power, and we compulsively strive for romance, success, and control. All of this, according to the authors, can be traced to the primal wound―a dark specter of isolation, abandonment, and alienation haunting human life.

The primal wound is the result of a violation we all suffer in various ways, beginning in early childhood and continuing throughout life. Because we are treated not as individual, unique human beings but as objects, our intrinsic, authentic sense of self is annihilated. This primal wounding breaks the fundamental relationships that form the fabric of human existence: the relationship to oneself, to other people, to the natural world, and to a sense of transpersonal meaning symbolized in concepts such as the Divine, the Ground of Being, and Ultimate Reality. In this book, Firman and Gila apply object relations theory, self-psychology, transpersonal psychology, and psychosynthesis to the issues of psychological wounding, healing, and growth and show how this wounding can be redeemed through therapy and through changing one's way of living.

John Firman and Ann Gila are teachers, authors, and psychotherapists in private practice in Palo Alto, California. Both were trained in psychosynthesis in the early 1970s, and Firman trained with its founder, Roberto Assagioli. They are adjunct faculty members at the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology and lead public and professional programs both in the United States and abroad.