In death everyone is equal: journeys of wounded healers

This week’s blog comes from downtown New York, so I hope I have got the timings right in posting it now! New York is one of my favourite cities and I have been here many times. One of those trips was to present at a conference and visit colleagues at the Mount Sinai Roosevelt (now Mount Sinai West) and Mount Sinai St Luke’s hospitals. Sadly, on this trip I don’t have an opportunity to catch up. It was something I wanted to do, and in particular, to hear how their approach in developing an Accountable Care Organisation (ACO) was working. Although I think their model is slightly different to the ACOs that are beginning to emerge in the UK, the same principles of providing comprehensive and co-ordinated care to individuals underpin both approaches.

  

Quite coincidentally, one of the emails I received before leaving for New York was an invitation to attend the International Practitioner Summit (2018) which this year takes as its focus the notion of the Wounded Healer. It will be the 10th anniversary of this conference, which although heavily featuring the work of medical colleagues, is a great conference for folk from all health care professions to attend. Like many other conferences, the Summit brings together academic and clinical practice, and draws on research as well as experiential knowledge. Unfortunately the Summit dates clash with something I have already agreed to go to. However, when I was reading the draft programme, I couldn’t help but notice that Dr Abigail Zuger, Associate Clinical Professor of Medicine, from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, was one of the key note speakers. 

I am disappointed not to be able to take part, as the programme looks wonderfully diverse and far reaching in terms of promoting, maintaining, and understanding what makes for good mental health and well-being in individuals and communities. There is a clue in the conference title ‘wounded healers’ that points to the recognition that none of us, be we practitioners or patients, are immune from experiencing mental health problems. The term ‘wounded healer’ is one attributed to the psychologist and psychoanalyst Carl Jung. This notion is that the analyst treats patents because the analyst is themselves ‘wounded’. Indeed research has shown that nearly 75% of counsellors and psychotherapists have experienced one or more wounding experiences which influenced their subsequent career choice. The psychotherapist Alison Barr, has undertaken a great deal of research into the relation of early life experiences to mental health problems in adult life. She describes the wounding experiences as most often including abuse (sexual, emotional and physical), personal mental ill-health, and the life-shortening illness of others

Of course, in acknowledging the ‘wounded healer’ there are many implications for all those engaged in therapeutic relationships, both in terms of preparation for practice and the supervision in practice. These implications were really brought home to me when I visited the 9/11 Memorial and Museum last week. I had been to New York a few times before 2001. I have been up the twin towers on each occasion. I have been back to New York since the 2001 attack and have always felt humbled by the way that folk remembered the 9/11 day. However, nothing had really prepared me for seeing the 9/11 memorial, Reflecting Absence.

Reflecting Absence is made up of  two memorial pools that sit within each of the footprints of the two twin towers. Around the sides of each pool are the names of the 2,977 people who lost their lives as a consequence of the attacks. The memorial pools are both simple, yet breathtakingly magnificent with water gently flowing ensuring it remains an oasis of calm amidst the hustle and bustle of neighbouring Wall Street. Michael Arad’s design was equally striking and respectful. Unlike some of the folk that appeared to be there purely to get the best selfie possible. 

I was struck by the name placement – some of which were grouped together to show allegiances, such as the names of people from the different fire and rescue service, or organisations that occupied the offices in the twin towers and surrounding buildings, or the passengers from the four planes involved in the attacks. Edith Lutnick, of the Cantor Fitzgerald Relief Fund, who was involved in the public and family consultations over the name placements, said of the decision over how to order the victims’ names: “Your loved ones’ names are surrounded by the names of those they sat with, worked with, those they lived with and, very possibly, those they died with”.

|In addition, there is an underground 9/11 museum at the memorial site. It is built 70 feet below ground and houses artefacts, message recordings, damaged emergency vehicles and parts of the twin tower and the hijacked planes. Although the museum is designed to evoke memories without causing additional distress, particularly to the family of the victims and the first responders, I chose not to visit it. It didn’t feel right somehow. The two memorial pools sit within a new plantation of some 400 trees, one of which is a Callery Pear that survived the original attack and has now been replanted. It is called the ‘Survivor Tree’, and is a symbol of both the resilience of the city and its residents, but also of all those whose lives were ‘wounded’ by the original attack. I guess some of those wounds, of disbelief and heartache, and hurt might never heal.