Jodorowsky, Alejandro - Psychomagic - The Transformative Power of Shamanic Psychotherapy

Alejandro, we must be careful to not drown our readers in an avalanche of acts. The letters we’ve read manifest different facets of Psychomagic. Will you choose a last letter in which a common psychological mechanism would be disempowered thanks to this amazing discipline? I think, for example, of fear. It is accepted that fear often masks a refused desire. Have you, in your archives, an updated “case,” which was resolved by this dynamic, in itself very banal?

I, of course, have many! Here is a letter to this exemplary regard:

One night in May, returning from your conference, I was attacked at the entrance of my apartment building by a masked man who tried to rape me. He did not succeed, but I was very afraid, and I have, without a doubt, concentrated my fright in the right side of my body, which, the next morning, was paralyzed. I conceived a living repulsion regarding men: I could not stand contact with them anymore, and sometimes I could not even sit next to them. The fear took hold, and if I returned home late, I would run up six flights of stairs. I, who beforehand never locked the door, isolated myself from the exterior world, barricading myself behind three bolts. But the fear, it did not stop behind the door, it accompanied me everywhere . . . So you prescribed this act: “Go to Pigalle and act like a prostitute. Find some pretext to not go with the men who proposition you.” A leaden weight could not be heavier on my shoulders . . . I chose July 17, the seventeen corresponding to the Star tarot and to Aquarius, my sign, thus, putting myself under its protection. I went ahead of time to learn the place and to observe the neighborhood, which I did not know. This was not at all an easy role for me to play. The evening of the 17, at 9 p.m., I dressed in a miniskirt, a low-cut shirt, high-heeled shoes with fishnet stockings, and heavy makeup—destination Pigalle! I really wanted to not meet any one of my neighbors on my trip. On the metro platform, a man approached me asking by turns for a light, the time, directions . . . I felt like I was in another person’s skin, and I observed what happened inside me. A friend went with me to Pigalle, and his presence was good for me. I sat on the terrace of a café. Some men came toward me, asking me to go with them. I refused, under the pretext of a benign illness. Some believed I had AIDS.

After having dinner with my friend Hervé, I returned exhausted, but I no longer had any fear and was able, hence, to walk alongside a man or climb my six flights of stairs without a problem. I was no longer isolating myself, and I felt at peace.

This act permitted me to see that several personalities live inside of me, to express them, to live my fear, and to go beyond it. I felt liberated and that I was now able to get ahead of it and continue on my way. Without this act, I would be, undoubtedly, completely repressed. Instead I am open.

When returning from a lecture last Wednesday, I realized a man was following me. He wanted to have his way with me. The psycho-magic act returned to my memory, as well as all the strength that I mustered from it. I confronted this man, and in his eyes, I saw fear. I was now aware of my own strength, and he could see this, too. He left the building, and I went home, calm and confident.

I send you my thoughts of love, joy, and harmony for you and your family.

Let this beautiful letter end this sampling of psychomagic epistles!

EIGHT

FROM IMAGINATION TO POWER

Alejandro, isn’t Psychomagic too simple, a bit too short? Analysis often takes years; a number of therapies are spread out over long periods of time . . .

You know, a labyrinth is no more than a tangle of straight lines. I ask myself if analysis and therapy do not sometimes have the tendency to introduce curves into straight lines . . . And then, an act has a more definitive door than any conversation. However, I should make one thing clear: it is rare that I prescribe an act to a person without having beforehand studied his genealogy tree—his family, parents, grandparents, brothers, sisters, and so forth.

So, each act we have reviewed is nothing but an episode in a longer process.

Yes, but a serious episode and decisive. If I walk with a nail in my shoes, my whole world, my sensibility, will be affected. Before trying to go farther, I have to refine my vision, to take out the nail. In the same way, when one suffers a trauma, all of our existence senses it. So it is important to remedy the trauma.

In addition, it seems to me that Psychomagic helps to solve certain very specific, precise problems. I see it more as an isolated intervention rather than, say, a global therapy.

Gilles, there is but one global healing: to find God. There is no other. Only the discovery of our interior God can heal us forever. The rest consists, for better or worse, of beating around the bush. No therapy can be partial.

What do you have to say on the subject of these methodical and, at the same time, insane conversations we’ve been having?

It is important to reaffirm the importance of the imagination. In a certain way, with you I’ve had an exercise in imaginary autobiography. Not in the sense of “imaginary,” since all of the reported facts are true, but in that the deep story of my life is of a constant effort to broaden the imagination, reduce the limitations, to apprehend its therapeutic and transforming potential. If I teach anything, it is the imagination.

Alejandro Jodorowsky, professor of the imagination . . .

Exactly. I teach people to imagine. Most of the time we have no idea what the imagination can be, we cannot conceive of the extent of its range. Because, in addition to the intellectual imagination, we also have the emotional imagination, the sexual imagination, the physical imagination, the economic imagination, the mystic imagination, the scientific imagination . . . On all levels, including what we call “rational,” the imagination is open. It is at home everywhere. So it is important to train it to approach reality not just from a one-and-only narrow perspective but from multiple angles. Ordinarily, we envision everything according to the very restricted paradigm of our beliefs, of our conditioning. From such a mysterious, vast, unpredictable reality, we cannot perceive more than what is filtered through our miniscule point of view. The active imagination is key to an expanded vision. It allows us to envision a life according to points of view other than our own, to think and sense things from different perspectives. This is true freedom: to be capable of leaving ourselves, crossing the boundaries of our little world to open up the universe. I would like the readers of this book to at least accept the idea of the therapeutic power of the imagination, so that Psychomagic, at the end of the day, is no more than a modest application of this very real power.

PART TWO

Lessons for Mutants

A SYNTHESIS OF EXPERIENCES

by Interviewer Javier Esteban

Alejandro Jodorowsky only agreed to begin these Lessons for Mutants on condition that the results could prove useful to others. My response was that if it was useful for me, a skeptical and much damaged man, it would be for others. Accordingly, we decided to create this work, which compliments, ten years after its appearance, his mythical work Psicomagia [Psychomagic]. These interviews are, therefore, the fruit of an experience between someone willing to share knowledge and someone who wants to learn. More than confirming certainties, our conversations weave constant doubts together with kind responses.