Rapunzel is locked in a tower by a “sorceress.” What is going on here? What is the psychological experience of being bewitched or under a spell? I meet this experience daily—in myself and others. Most schools of psychology have a way of talking about being under a spell. The cognitive psychologists speak of “automatic thoughts” and “core beliefs,” some speak of “the programmed tapes we listen to,” and Carl Jung’s complexes. Jung says of complexes: “In the middle Ages it went by another name: it was called possession.”
The state of being under a spell is not a rare occurrence, and there are many kinds of spells. The spell that traps one in a tower, that isolates the whole individual with such anxiety that interaction with others is rare or at least filled with distress, or a spell that creates a situation in which feelings go unexpressed, might include thoughts like:
“it is dangerous to interact with others, I’ll get hurt, I’ll be made fun of, I am not worthy to interact with others, I am less than. If what is trapped is the feeling life, perhaps the spell works its magic with such thoughts as, no one wants to know what you are feeling, your feelings don’t matter, or they’ll make fun of you if you show your feelings, or real men aren’t emotional, etc.” You get the picture. Can you hear the sorceress and her incantation?
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2 comments:
I get trapped in anxiety quite a bit - spinning around in an unvoiced chaotic place where words have almost no meaning. One way to get out of it (for me) is to go outside and touch the real world, to breathe the hot humid air and listen to the birds, to pull weeds in the garden. After 30 minutes of this "garden therapy" I often find that the anxieties are more clear. After reading this post though I think I'll call my garden therapy a counterspell!
Well put! Sounds like you have powerful magic in that garden.
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