Marika Henriques

Henriques

The Honeysuckle Man

I looked at the man in front of me. He was tall, thin, slightly stooped, with deep-set eyes and masses of black hair. I thought he had a lonely face, like a desolate and ravaged landscape. He sat with his arms crossed over his chest, his hands resting lightly on his shoulders as if shielding himself from an imaginary blow. He often sits like this, I thought."

The 'Honeysuckle Man' is the true and moving story of a deeply injured man "Only the others exist, I don't", is how he matter-of-factly informs his therapist. The story portrays the developing relationship of two people sitting in a room, one listening the other telling as well as discovering his story.

It tells of the deep effect they have on each other. It tells of the struggle and painstaking journey towards understanding and the gradual healing of the patient's hidden woundedness. It informs of what psychotherapy truly is or can be, without the hype, the jargon, the assumptions and preconceptions. It is also a story of a plant and a poem, both of which helped the reclamation of a lost self.

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Henriques2

"The Lions are Coming": The Healing Image In Jungian Dreamwork

A contribution by the author in British Journal of Psychotherapy, 20(4) pp.513-526

"Here we are all, by day; by night we're hurled By dreams, each one, into a several world. "

This article demonstrates a Jungian interpretation of dreams by describing the working through of four dreams of a patient. She came to therapy deeply depressed and suicidal. She gradually gained good experiences of the unconscious through her vivid dreams. The paper describes how the transformative power of dream images brought healing for her, how as the images changed she changed with them.

The First part of the article outlines some Jungian concepts as an introduction to the actual dreamwork. Jung observed that the psyche does not work with concepts but manifests through images. They are the language of the psyche, the living aspects of a person's innermost being. As Jung put it: "concepts are coined and negotiable values, images are life. "While concepts can be discussed and talked about images speak for themselves.

Therefore the dreamwork is approached in a poetic way and reads more like a story than an academic exposition.

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