ABSTRACT
In my opinion, we cannot reflect adequately on trauma and the treatment of liminal states without a deep understanding of formative spiritual experiences, since the spiritual dimension is always constellated in this work. Trauma therapy has an intrinsically spiritual core. It fosters the embodiment of something essential, the reconnection of the ego with the numinous core of being and a transformation of consciousness that results in a reintegration of the personality on a new level. In trauma therapy, the clinical and the spiritual approaches should be wed. I wish to show that whenever something totally overpowering and beyond our daily reality is experienced, some serious emergency or traumatic shock, the traumatized person turns to mythological or biblical language to frame the experience in an archetypal system of meaning. Jung always pointed out that in moments of panic or highly charged emotional states, when one feels defeated, religious imagery and symbols emerge, a result, Jung might say, of the soul’s “religious function.” He wrote: “The God-image is not something invented; it is an experience that comes upon man spontaneously.” 1
