“The wounded healer is one who holds her own pain while staying present to the other in theirs, knowing that this, more than anything else he or she may do, is what awakens the inner healer in the other. The wounded healer is one who knows that even when there is nothing left to do, we still have choice . . . we each carry a potential for healing within us . . . our woundedness being the very ground from which the green shoot of healing emerges . . . The more we can be with our own pain, the more we can be with others in theirs. This encourages the other to stay with their own suffering, which is where they need to be if they are to experience healing.”

This was written by Michael Kearney, one of the founders of palliative care medicine in North America and Britain in his 2007 article, “Mortally wounded”. How do we heal – through diagnosis and treatment (cognition) or through touch? For me, it’s both. Kearney feels that the model of Hippocrates, one of the founding figures of Western medicine “does not address all kinds of pain nor tell the whole story. Pain control only works when the pain can be managed by our interventions. Something else is also required in the face of uncontrollable malaise.”

That “something else” he finds in the approach of Asclepius, the other founder of Western medicine. This approach “suggests that even though the healer cannot completely control the pain and grief of dying, one can choose to be with and hold that pain. With self-knowledge and mindfulness, healers can learn to recognize the pattern of what happens when one hits the limits of what one can do in the face of suffering. One can choose to stay with one’s own distress as a way of staying with the other in their suffering. The mutual abiding with suffering becomes a form of shared witness-a bi-lateral healing beyond uni-lateral curing” (Michael Kearney)

Asclepius’ teacher, Chiron was a wounded healer – half man and half horse, reconnecting with our deeper unconscious feelings and our belonging to earth. According to Greek mythology, he was wounded by Herakles during a boar hunt when a poisoned arrow pierced his leg and would not heal. “Though Chiron could not cure himself, he found that he could cure others and became known as a wise and compassionate healer. Those who came to him in his underground cave found understanding and compassion. In his wounded presence, they felt more whole and well, which is why they called him “the wounded healer.”

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.