The body plays an integral role in the expression of personal myth. Exploring the symbolic dimension of a body symptom helps to unravel the mystery of wounding and healing that lies hidden within the symptom itself. Dreams, visions and artwork will be utilized to bring meaning to such manifestations.

Within this context, Ms. Rothenberg will describe her personal experience with psychic wounds that manifested as physical scars and that led her to Africa to study scarification rites. The scars, instead of simply being the source of embarrassment and pain, became the sacred jewels that illuminated the path of self-understanding, thus creating a link to the spiritual meaning embedded in a body symptom.

Related Workshop: Body Symptoms in Individuation

Rose-Emily Rothenberg, M.A. is a Jungian Analyst practicing in Pacific Palisades, California, and is on the faculty of the C.G.Jung Institute of Los Angeles. Her special interest–on which she has lectured nationally and internationally–is the relationship between disease and the psyche, how body symptoms can be central to discovering one’s myth, and the benefit of using the expressive arts to better understand one’s body symptoms. She is the author of The Jewel in the Wound.