“Working –through of trauma calls for a delicate equipoise between silence and speaking, invisibility, and visibility, if the wound is to grow into a healing scar.”

This is probably one of the most beautiful sentences I’ve read – that is as therapist at least. These wise words are by the Irish philosopher, Richard Kearney. He explores the idea of the “wounded healer” in mythology and literature and practices it in his own work endeavouring to bring about healing and reconciliation in divided communities. Just listen:

“If one covers the pain too soon, it festers and needs to be reopened at a later time for a new scar to form; if one covers it too late, infection can set in and the pain becomes intolerable. Wounded healers know, from their own experience of woundedness, two basic things:

(1) the right timing between too early and too late, and

(2) the right spacing between too near and too far

As important as sensitivity to timing, is being careful neither to over-identify with suffering (too close) nor to remain and indifferent observer (too removed). It is a matter of tact in the sense of both tactility and know-how. An art of ‘exquisite empathy’”.

His idea of “exquisite empathy” embraces compassion as feeling into the pain of others, while keeping an appropriate distance. Tactility is about touch, and specifically how to touch. (click to read my previous blogs on empathy: https://bodytheology.co.za/2018/11/15/the-erosion-of-empathy/  and https://bodytheology.co.za/2018/11/22/make-empathy-great-again/ )

In the next blog or two I shall retrace Kearney’s footsteps in mythology and literature leading up to his interpretation of wounds and the “wounded healer”, and healing through narrative catharsis.

Note: This is a discussion of Richard Kearney’s chapter, “The hermeneutics of wounds” in the 2018 book “Unconscious Incarnations: Psychoanalytical and Philosophical Perspectives of the Body”, edited by Brian W Becker, John Panteleimon Manoussakis, and David M Goodman.