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Stellate Ganglion Block for Trauma and PTSD - Interview with Dr. James Lynch

Stellate Ganglion Block (SGB)—a medical procedure that effectively treats symptoms associated with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD)—is an injection of local anesthetic in the neck to temporarily block the cervical sympathetic chain which controls the body’s fight-or-flight response. 
​SGB has been safely used for over 80 years for many other reasons but was discovered ten years ago to provide relief of PTSD symptoms as well.  Since that time, along with a handful of other physicians, I have pioneered the use of SGB for treating posttraumatic stress within the US Army.  Due to its safety, success rate, and rapid onset of relief, SGB has gained wide acceptance in several locations at US military hospitals where it has been available.  
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The 3 Personalities of Karen Horney Feminist Psychoanalyst

Karen Horney was a German psychoanalyst. Her career came into prominence in the nineteentwenties when she formed theories on human attachment and neurosis that split from Freud’skey ideas. Horney’s theory of personality development and individuation are still highly relevantto modern theories of personality, attachment psychology and psychological trauma. Eventhough she is not well remembered, her work is as relevant as it was at the turn of the century.Applying her theories to my work with patients and to my own life has been an integral piece ofmy own personal and professional development. This article is part one of four in a seriesexplaining Horney’s theories.
At the time of this writing my daughter is two. Sometimes when my wife and I relax slightly inpublic, she will get a glimmer in her eye and, starting to giggle, run away from us. While we willyell for her to stop, she will cackle drunk with her new found power, as she runs away into acrowd of strangers or into oncoming traffic. When we take her to school or to meet new peopleshe wraps herself around my wife’s leg, pressing her cheek into my wife’s calf, and refuses toSpeak.
Two year old children cannot understand moderation or limitation. They demand to have “morefood” even when their plate is overflowing. Minutes later they will refuse to eat another bitebecause they are “full”. They cannot understand shades of gray. They refuse to believe thatthey need a nap until their eyes are closing. People are either all “bad guys” or all “good guys”.Individual children live in a world of extremes with tunnel vision on their immediate presentdesires and realities.
Infants do not understand that they are separate creatures from their mother. The firsttraumatic event in an infant’s life is the separation from the mother as the infantbecomes a toddler. Infants are connected to the mother for so much of their post birthexperience. In order to soothe infants we try to make them feel as though they are still in thewomb. We swaddle infants, keep them warm, and play white noise. The mother is both theirsource of physical comfort and nourishment. So much of the infant’s conscious experience iscentered on its connection to its mother, that it makes sense that infants would lack the ability tounderstand what they are outside of the central reality of their experience.
For the nine months in the womb an infant is physically and psychologically dependent on itsmother. It takes at least one and a half years after being born for infants to begin to piecetogether that they will have to eventually become something separate from their mother.Because infants cannot understand their existence without their mother, this means that whenthey are inevitably forced to separate from their mother, infants feel like their existence is underthreat. The necessary task of the mother is to separate the child from herself into itself. Yet, thisfeels to the child like it is being obliterated. This is often the first major trauma of a child’s life.
Karen Horney’s theory of personality and neurosis is built on examining its effect on an infant’sdevelopment. When toddlers begin to be separated from their mothers they experiencemoments where they, like my daughter, think they are God and can run through traffic. They arecompletely independant, completely free, can do things “by themself”, and will never needsupervision or approval from parents again. They quickly alternate into periods of abject terrorwhere they are horrified with their agency as an independent being and, often wrappingthemselves around her leg, attempt to remerge with their mother.
The distinction between infant and toddler is between a creature that can not live independentlyand a creature that sometimes thinks it can. Toddlers alternate between rejecting all authority tobecome a god and trying to crawl back into the womb in order to forget they exist. Our ego iswhat allows us to navigate the overwhelming forces of the unconscious. The ego allows us toaccept both our autonomy and reconcile our own ultimate insignificance. Toddlers are justbeginning to develop an ego that will synthesize these competing, and contradictory realities.As a trauma therapist I use Horney’s theories constantly. The connection between the way thatour parents give us attention and the way we learn to get attention from others in later life isendlessly relevant in many types of therapy, especially work with trauma. In Horney’s theory ofneurosis, the way that a child individuates from their mother determines their coping style andpredicts many of the psychological issues they may develop in later life.
Moving Towards People
Karen Horney was a German psychoanalyst. Her career came into prominence in the nineteentwenties when she formed theories on human attachment and neurosis that split from Freud’skey ideas. Horney’s theory of personality development and individuation are still highly relevantto modern theories of personality, attachment psychology and psychological trauma.Horney observed that children deploy three different coping styles during the time they areindividuating from the mother. Ideally children learn mastery in the three different styles. Inimperfect situations infants become over dependent in one style and form a neurotic and rigidpersonality style. This second part of a four part article will explore the moving towards peoplepersonality style.
The first coping strategy that children will attempt in order to retain the connection with themother during individuation is to ask for help Horney called this stage moving towards people.As infants we cry in order to make our mothers come running to our aid. If our mother’s continueto come running to our aid for the rest of childhood however, this can impair our development aswe fail to learn to solve our own problems internally or assert ourselves. In extreme caseswhere mothers will not separate from a child to allow room for experimentation with assertive
aggression or self soothing behavior the child becomes neurotic and co-dependant in themoving towards people style.People and characters with this level of impairment see the entire world in terms of their motherand never learn to make their own judgements or form their own values. What would motherthink of this? That is against mother’s rules. Another force like a charismatic leader, romanticpartner or social identity may replace the actual mother at some point, but the inability to be aseparate person will remain. Persons over dependent on another person or group’s ego haveno ability to self soothe without the warm glow of the surrogate mother’s approval and ability todefine rules and worth.
Horney calls this neurosis the need for affection and approval. The sense of self in people withthis personality type is incredibly diffuse as they are not able to watch others withdraw theirapproval even for good reason. The psychologist Albert Ellis used to tell his patients that “It ispathological to want to be liked by everybody all the time”. I often tell mine that “There are timeswhen the loving or the honest thing to do is to piss someone off”. When we cannot stand to seeour standards judged by other people it means that we cannot have a stable sense of self withauthentic standards for self worth.
This need often manifests as a form of codependency in relationships or friendships as peopletry to replace the stabilizing presence of a controlling caregiver with a different set of rules andboundaries. We learn to tolerate the anxiety of not knowing what to do and being forced tochoose early in life. When we have not been allowed to adapt to making small choices over thelife course we decompensate in the face of larger overwhelming choices about our life andIdentity.
In therapy I encounter patients who have had a controlling caregiver, and a correspondinginability to develop their own sense of identity. I start by asking them simple questions aboutwho they are. Patients with an underdeveloped sense of personal identity will often have noidea what their basic preferences and beliefs are. Often they will have found an abusive partneror a rigid social, political, or religious group to fill up the “blank” spaces in their identity with. Inhealthy partnerships we are allowed to maintain our own sense of identity while still participatingin a group affiliation or romantic partnership.
I always frame the therapy with these patients as an exciting adventure that we are going ontogether. We are going to discover who the patient is and who they want to become. Patients ofthis coping style often will try and figure out what the therapist wants them to do and what the“new rules” that the therapist has for their life are. Their primary fear is that they will dosomething “wrong” and don't know what the “right” answers are to their life questions. I tellpatients that “You are the only best expert in how to be you”.
While the freedom and gray area of this kind of personality development therapy is initiallyterrifying to patients, eventually this style of therapy becomes exhilarating as patients reconnectto a long absent sense of self. Even though patients present to therapy blank and indifferent about their, often abusive and traumatic history, they will start to recognize moments in the pastwhen they had a strong emotion or a preference that was dismissed by a caregiver or a partner.“I was so angry that my clothes were picked out for me every day”. “I was told that goodchristians don’t go to prom”.
Not all people in the moving towards people neurotic type will use a partner to try andcomplete their functioning. Oftentimes I have patients with social and intellectual gifts that useadmiration, fame or envy in order to move towards people. Many people seek fame or attention,but those with a moving towards people neurosis will not be able to function withoutadmiration of others. These patients are not able to determine the value or morality of theirbehavior without group approval.
Moving Against People
Karen Horney was a German psychoanalyst. Her career came into prominence in the nineteentwenties when she formed theories on human attachment and neurosis that split from Freud’skey ideas. Horney’s theory of personality development and individuation are still highly relevantto modern theories of personality, attachment psychology and psychological trauma. This thirdpart of a four part article will explore the moving against people personality style.
In Horney’s theory of individuation, the individuating child will settle into one of three differentpersonality styles based on what allows it to successfully reclaim its parent’s attention. The first style that children try is the moving towards people style. This is most familiar to the child since this is the style they are accustomed to using in infancy. If this asking for attention and attempting to be close to the mother through affection fail, the child will next try aggression in order to force it’s caregiver to give it what it wants. If only aggression is effective the child willsettle firmly into a moving against people personality style.
People in the moving against people personality style had sporadic or unpredictable affectionoffered to them as children. They came from environments that were hostile or uncaring andhandled the fundamental insecurity that these environments engendered by becomingaggressive. They never had the option of asking for the basic attention children need andinstead learned to demand attention. Caregivers were neglectful and unresponsive until thesefought for the little affection or attention available in their home.
This reality in their family of origin colors these patient’s interpersonal style and assumptionsabout the world. These assumptions about others and the world are immediately recognizable inthe first few minutes of the first therapy session when a patient in the moving against peoplepersonality style presents to therapy. Patients in the moving against people personality style are not likely to come to therapy and do not usually present to therapy until they are in crisis orare facing significant personal or professional losses due to their rigidity.
Just as patients in the moving towards people personality type often have anger turned off,patients in the moving against people personality type are often out of touch with their abilityto feel hurt or vulnerable. To ward this feeling off patients in theis personality style develop a“don’t mess with me” defensive posture. They may use wit as a weapon becoming acerbicallyfunny. They maybe overly macho or simply act like they don’t care what anyone thinks.
Most often patients who are neurotic in the moving against people personality style are highlycompetitive and motivated to dominate athletics, group functions and professional environments. Patients in this style are often high achievers when they are skilled. They areseen as invulnerable at work but often feel hollow in personal spheres. They are unable tounderstand the point of life without comparison and competition. Patients often present totherapy in middle age when there is “nothing else left to win”.
Moving Away From People
Karen Horney was a German psychoanalyst. Her career came into prominence in the nineteentwenties when she formed theories on human attachment and neurosis that split from Freud’skey ideas. Horney’s theory of personality development and individuation are still highly relevantto modern theories of personality, attachment psychology and psychological trauma.
Horney observed that children deploy three different coping styles during the time they areindividuating from the mother. Ideally children learn mastery in the three different styles. Inimperfect situations infants become over dependent in one style and form a neurotic and rigidpersonality style. This second part of a four part article will explore the moving away frompeople personality style. 
Horney’s three neurotic personality styles can most simply be understood as dependency (moving towards people), Aggression (moving against people) and resignation (moving away from people). The resigned type is the result of the developing child discovering that they are unable to get the attention of the parent either through asking for attention or demanding it. The child then retreats into an innerworld where it creates its own systems of psychological reward through creativity and self expansion.
If you are a writer or a psychotherapist it is highly likely that you are strongly developed in thisarea even if you are not quite a neurotic! The ability to move into your head and create your ownrules and concepts for life is a useful skill, but not one we learn from asking or demandingattention from our parents. These personality types are more able to see through the arbitrarynature of the rules or traditions in a society, and have less attachment to the cultural rules.
Unless these children develop ways of communicating these inner worlds they can seem“spacey” or “lost in their thoughts”. All of the neuroses that Horeney observes can be understood as the limiting conditions that a person with insecure attachment has for being safe. The dependent type needs others to feel safe, while the aggressive type needs control. A person in the “moving away from people” neurotic type only feels safe when some inner condition of solitude or independance has been fulfilled. This ultimate value of independence can present in several ways. Some want to be invisible, living an unassuming and private life. Sometimes the fixation on independence manifests and living off the land, being wealthy, and sometimes as being emotionally independent. Patients in this style may emulate, Jay Gatsby, Jeremiah Johnson or John Wayne.
The moving away from people’s personality type is not comfortable unless they are absolutelyindependent in some special area. While the moving towards people type needs people in orderto function, and the moving against people personality type needs people in order to becomedominant, the moving away from people type feels unsafe if it needs people for anythingsubstantial. This does not mean that they are unsuccessful socially, only that they areuncomfortable with relying on social or emotional ties to others in order to feel stable. This typefailed to maintain a connection with their mother through either dependence seeking oraggressive behaviors. 
They learned to soothe themselves and learned their own coping skills.This process of learning to regulate ones own emotions as a child without assistance leadschildren into their own head where they develop a large and elaborate inner world. Childrenbecome less interested or even aware of external realities like norms, socially, or practicaltasks. Instead of learning to manage their feelings they become fascinated with them. 
Moving away from people personality type patients have a unique knack for encoding their beliefs, personality and opinions into artistic creations because they crave the recognition andunderstanding that was denied them by their caregivers as children. Art, humor, fashion,business even, is a way of communicating something about the hidden self to others.
 
 

The Child Archetype 6/6

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The Child is a tricky archetype to find within ourselves. The Child is the first archetype that the self identifies with. The Child has no problem asking for help or expressing it’s emotions and desires loudly and honestly. The Child is a kind of creative anarchy that we lose as adults and rediscover during liminal and transitional spaces in our development. The Child is a freedom we reconnect with when we release the parts of ourselves that have held us back. The Child is the “alive” feeling that addicts begin to connect with after completing recovery. The Child is strongly associated with the unconscious and a sense of connectedness to all things. Children are still discovering the things that make them unique individuals. The Child is growth and Children know how to grow instinctively.
The Child does not remember all of the rules that we had to learn as adults and is more interested in its own creative impulses and whims than rules or deadlines. The Child is necessary for art and for self discovery, but it can become solipsistic when it is over indulged. The Child puts us in touch with vulnerability but it cares about its own emotions, desires and whims. It is not aware of others or their wants or needs. The Child is important to creatives because it is the source of new ideas and perspectives but it needs to be tempered lest we become selfish, oblivious and inwardly focused.
In adulthood is the process of losing touch with the vulnerability and capacity for growth that we felt as children. Adults come to believe that the limiting voice of their inner critic is “responsible” and that asking for help or admitting vulnerability is “weak”. Many times the process of therapy forces us to uncover our own vulnerable child and reconnect with the parts of ourselves that are hurting or scared. When we cannot honestly admit our own needs, fears and sadness we often over complicate our life.
Patients who are over identified with the Child may present to therapy lost in creative visions and emotional whims. While over identified with the Child, these patients will be oblivious or in denial about the practical and detail oriented responsibilities of adult life. They may be prone to bouts of drug use or personal vision quests and passion projects. Patients will often overly identify with the Child as a response to their families of origin having pathological Queen archetypes that stifled development. In college or as adults they cast aside all responsibilities and overcompensate for the constraints of their childhood with an overly juvenile outlook on responsibility.
Patients under identified with their Child will present to therapy asking the therapist to produce pragmatic and concrete changes in their lives and relationships. They often come from families led by an over identified King or Warrior that had no interest in the uncertainty or self discovery of the Child archetype. They are rote and uninterested in the abstractions of therapy, art, or life. These patients have little interest in getting in touch with the vulnerabilities or flights of fancy of the Child.
We are all born into the world as a vulnerable Child, as naïve beings that see the world as an unending canvas on which to paint our vision for ourselves. These tendencies are idealistic, but also natural. Material realities impose restrictions on our lives, and we are remiss to ignore them, but also waste the potential meaning in our lives if we become their slaves. Rediscovering the child is necessary for personal growth and healing required to make progress in therapy. The Child is not only creativity and growth, but also our innate resilience. Patients who rediscover the Child during a chronic illness may make recoveries whereas patients who do not may not.

The Lover Archetype 5/6

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The Lover is one of the most difficult archetypes to notice that you are experiencing. By its very nature it is seductive and spontaneous. The Lover is most commonly associated with sex, but sex is the smallest part of the archetype. You cannot experience the Lover by yourself, but you do not necessarily have to experience it with another person. Anytime you are pulled into an alluring daydream, swept up in the rhetoric of a rousing speech, or moved to a sense of greater understanding by a work of art or fiction, you are beginning to fall into the embrace of the Lover. The Lover is a drum circle, it is staring deeply into a bonfire, it is a poem about time, a drug trip. The Lover can be an infinite amount of things.
The Lover is most easily understood as our ability to give up a small part of ourselves to become part of something greater. The Lover is our ability to merge with another person or a group of people. The Lover lets us dissolve part of our own ego to be a part of a greater purpose or force of society. If we do not have access to the Lover we are completely alone, completely with purpose and life becomes an abstraction. We are connection making creatures and it is the Lover archetype that allows us to make those connections.
Because The Lover requires us to give up a piece of ourselves in order to identify with it, over identification with The Lover can be disastrous. Patients over identified with The Lover might try to dissolve themselves passionately into each many new relationships or over identify with each new friend. Extreme over identification with The Lover leaves patients with no sense of self. These patients will operate in society as chameleons. Over identification with the Lover is over identification with something outside of oneself. They will continue to find religious, romantic, or social relationships that let them take on someone else’s identity and concept of self.
When working with patients with substance abuse problems therapists should be very aware of the functioning of the lover archetype. Addiction is often understood by therapists as an attempt to numb out painful emotions or memories, and while this interpretation is correct it is also an incomplete understanding of what addiction is. Substance abuse is always fueled by a desperate attempt to have connection with something. The loneliness and isolation that patients with substance abuse issues feel is an extreme under identification with the lover archetype and the hunger for the wholeness of the lover is often the emotional state sought by the addicted person.
I always tell my patients that an addiction is often a hunger for growth with a simultaneous refusal to change. Substance abuse provides the feeling of growth and connection without the actual work or risk. Drugs like alcohol and stimulants often activate the Lover by making us feel productive, creative, loved or accepted. Drugs like depressants or psychedelics often activate the Lover by allowing us to turn off our conscious mind and remerge with the world. Psychedelics and transcendental religious practices often allow a person to experience ego death or a “oneness” with all things. This form of ultimate connectedness is the most activated state of the archetype as we have completely given up our own identity.
The Lover requires us to have the ability to trust something outside of ourselves and may be difficult for patients with trauma to experience without anxiety. We first learn how safe it is to open up to others within our family of origin. Patients that have a strong under identification with The Lover often never felt safe in their families of origin. Patients over identified with the Lover might have had a parent over identified with their Queen and are used to finding a controlling partner. If someone has made us a puppet then we involuntarily find a puppeteer when we leave our families of origin. These patients often become codependent in relationships, looking for someone to give their life rules and meaning. They believe they are unable to do this for themselves.
The Lover is an often ignored archetype, but is needed to give the other archetypes any ability to operate. What is the cause that the Warrior fights for, where is the growth or the creativity of the Child without The Lover? For that matter, what is the grand vision of a King or control of the Queen without the ability to make a connection? For a patient to participate in a relationship with a therapist there must be some part of the Lover archetype active. Therapy requires trust and a dissolution of boundaries enough for the therapist and patient to collaborate on treatment. We cannot begin to benefit in therapy unless we give up some part of our old self and are willing to be open to creating a new self image. Resistance to the therapy process can also be understood as a resistance to experience this archetype

The Magician Archetype 4/6

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The Magician is intuition, education, and reflexes. In myth and legend the Magician appears in stories not to be the hero, but to aid the hero on their quest. In these stories the Magician can also take the form of a witch, enchanter, or shaman. The Magician is the most esoteric part of our schooling that filled us with the most passion. The Magician is a sense of personal power and accomplishment, but not power gained through conflict like the Warrior. Power for the Magician comes through cleverness, tricks and being resourceful and inventive.
To the Warrior knowledge, secrets and intrigue make one strong, not brute strength. The Magician is a wiseman and a diviner, both prescient and empathic. The magician can act as a negotiator or statesman, but is more commonly a salesman, seducer, or an entertainer. The Magician stands with one foot in two worlds. He is a gatekeeper between the abstract clairvoyant realm of the unconscious and the practical and results oriented world of the everyday. He brings back visions from the world of the unconscious and bestows them as gifts on others. This power to surprise and interest others is closely tied to our own need for attention. Patients that did not get the attention they desired as children will often have a well developed Magician. These patients believed as children that something about them was bad or shameful, and developed their magician archetype as a way of being seen or having control.
It is the Magician that impresses others with insights, funny stories and hidden talents. It is the Magician that is able to stand out in a bar room or business meeting when others are vying for attention. The Magician is our ingenuity, and adaptability in the face of situations that we cannot plan for or control. The Magician is our ability to read between the lines in academic domains, to see the broader point or meaning beyond a text. Every insight or inspiration that you have ever pulled from the ether and used to your advantage feels like magic. If you are comfortable pulling clever observations and realizations from the unconscious and putting them to use then you are strongly identified with the Magician.
Patients may be under identified with their Magician if they were brought up to be rule oriented or understand the world only as a series of lists to be memorized. These patients are not intuitive but learn by memorizing a series of steps that became a crutch for their thinking. Patients under identified with their own Magician will distrust the Magician in others. They are not adaptable and are inflexible in their thinking. Patients who view people that are funny or creative with suspicion are likely to be under identified with their own Magician.
Patients who are over identified with the Magician may have a grandiose idea of what their intellect or insight will get them out. They may think genius will solve every problem without elbow grease. They may try to use a charming personality or a quick wit to escape hard work or interpersonal conflict. Patients who are deeply dismayed over poor academic performance despite no effort at study will be over identified with the Magician. These patients are often under identified with their Warrior because they have never learned to overcome situations their intuition cannot control or to work hard for a reward.
The fundamental anxiety that the magician assuages is the inability to control one’s surroundings. The Magician is at its root a personality device developed to maintain control during a period in a person’s life when assertiveness was not allowed.
This was often a way to hold on to some control of our environment when direct confrontation was not an option. The Magician can also develop in early childhood when a child feels like there is a need in the family of origin that neither caregiver can meet. This is often a wounded or unreliable caregiver the child has to manage. This leads to the development of an often “magical” seeming ability to read others, read between the lines, and communicate in indirect ways like art and humor.
A patient who is over identified with both the Warrior and the Magician may try to dominate others with their intellect, delighting in the humiliation they cause. After all the cynic is the shadow of the caregiver. A caregiver sees the needs of others in order to meet them. The cynic sees the same needs in others, but uses them to exploit or write off other people. This cynic is the shadow side of the magician’s ability to use intuition to understand others. An example in pop culture would be the stand up comic that summarizes and denigrates groups of people with acerbic insight.

The Warrior Archetype 3/6

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The Warrior archetype allows us to harness our own sense of personal power to face fear and assert our own energy against the plans of others and the plans of the universe. The Warrior allows us to enforce boundaries securely between ourselves and others. It lets us carve out our own sense of personal space and make clear to others what is allowed and what is not. Mankind has had a warrior class as long as there has been civilization. We must all at some point in life learn to face our fears and accomplish something scary. The psychologist Albert Ellis was fond of saying that it was “pathological to want to be liked by everyone all the time”. He knew wisely that we must all learn to face conflict and navigate disagreements with others to remain true to ourselves and our journey.
The Warrior is our actualized capacity for self-expansion, personality development and discovery. We cannot discover who we are meant to be unless we are brave enough to face the unknown and know we deserve to grow. The Warrior is our capability to develop and use our talents for personal and professional achievement, but the Warrior does not exercise leadership or hold authority. The Warrior is not power within systems, only our sense of personal power and competency. The Warrior is our own success within a system of many other Warriors. The Warrior is our own unique abilities harnessed to make ourselves succeed.
Each of the archetypes deals with some form of fundamental anxiety, and the anxiety that the warrior assuages is meaninglessness in the face of chaos. The enemy of the warrior is chaos. When chaos surrounds us we feel like we are not special, like there is no plan, like we do not matter. The Warrior allows us to impose our will into the void and create meaning from scratch. When we feel like life has no purpose, it is our Warrior energy that lets us create purpose. While this function of the Warrior is not a bad thing when it becomes overindulged it becomes the shadow function of tribalism.
While the Warrior lets us strike back at chaos when it threatens our meaning and significance it can also lead us to turn on other people who are not like us.
The over-identified Warrior sees other people as chaos when they act contra its own plans and meaning. Shadow political and religious leaders often call us to over-identify with the Warrior when they tell us to defend our own tribe against attacks from those who are different and would take away what is ours. The Warrior is what allows us to reclaim our purpose and significance when the world threatens to take these things away from us but when overindulged it robs others of these things.
Patients who are under-identified with the Warrior will feel listless, purposeless, and incapable. These patients will often have had their Warrior taken away in an abusive relationship or in their families of origin where they were not allowed to assert themselves. Often they will present to therapy with a general sense of anxiety, believing they lack the power to be assertive, enforce boundaries or change their current reality when it distresses them. Losing touch with the Warrior leads a person to be fearful and conflict avoidant yet be prone to bouts of rage. Without the Warrior we can not act on our anger and do not notice it until it takes us over.
Over identification with the Warrior means that we see every interaction as a challenge, every challenge a fight with a winner and a loser. When the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem is a nail; the old saying goes. If you are over-identified as a Warrior, you will not be able to back down from any confrontation. A diplomacy is never an option to the Warrior. The Warrior is not an archetype that is comfortable accepting humility or the mystery. The warrior is only comfortable with certainty, but as adults, we must learn to be comfortable with the mystery of life. An over-identified warrior archetype might benefit the occasional type-a personality in the business world but most often at the expense of personality development, healthy relationships, and a well-rounded existence.
The Warrior is the mask that we wear when we want to see ourselves as the hero. Patients under-identified with the Warrior may have lost the ability to see themselves as the hero, where patients over-identified with the Warrior may not be able to take off the mask of the hero they aspire to be. The Warrior archetype requires that life and development has taught us to have faith in ourselves and a self-image that allows us to achieve our dreams. Many patients with damage in childhood do not know that they have a right to their own hero’s journey or deserve self-discovery. Oftentimes therapy with traumatized patients will require a therapist to teach patients how to put on the warrior mask.
Under Identification with the Warrior is a disowning of one’s powerful self and ability to act heroically or make meaning. The warrior is at its base an ability to make meaning out of life. If we have disowned the warrior we either see life as meaningless or rely on others to make it for us as followers. Oftentimes patients who have learned that anger is not allowed will try and disown the warrior and “play zen” to avoid the anxiety that conflict causes for them. These patients will often act as though conflict is beneath them when in truth judging or disagreeing with others terrifies them.
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The Queen Archetype 2/6

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The Queen is the power behind power and the maternal influence on development. The Queen is the indirect power that we hold over authority and systems just as the magician is the indirect power we hold over peers and our immediate vicinity. She is every calculated comment that ever made you reconsider your own behavior. She is every raised eyebrow that made you behave. The Queen is long talks by the fire with a loved one about your own worst impulses. She is tempering to power, but when over identified with she becomes a manipulative puppet master behind the throne, a Bloody Mary.
The Queen uses her influence over the powerful to exercise her own power. If this concept is lost on you, then you are likely under identified with your own Queen. If this is the case, be careful, because it is the patients under identified with their own Queen who are most susceptible to be influenced by the Queen of others. If we do not understand the art of manipulation, we have no defenses against it. The Queen is, by her very nature, the least recognized archetype. The Queen is the thing behind the thing. She is the unnoticed influence on the world. The Queen is the reason that the people in charge behave better than they otherwise would.
The Queen is a mothering impulse in all of us. She sits close to our Anima or archetype of the feminine. The Queen is the part of us that wants to see the people around us grow and flourish under our watchful gaze. The Queen smiles as her children and her husband mistake her subtle suggestions for their own ideas. She is the master of the understated and implied. The Queen is consigliere, advisor, right hand man, and second in command.
The fundamental insecurity behind the Queen is the fear that power is incompetent or malevolent. Patients with an over developed Queen usually had a competitive parent or a parent that viewed them as a peer in childhood. Like patients with an overdeveloped Magician, the child with an overdeveloped Queen may have worn this anxiety like a badge of honor in childhood. However, also like the child with an over developed Magician this damaged the child, leaving them hyper vigilant and trapped with an exhausting control instinct. Unlike patients with an over developed Magician, patients with an overdeveloped Queen felt responsible for running a household by proxy and controlling an irascible or inconsistent parent. They did not seek to be understood or get attention from a caregiver like children with an overidentified Magician.
Patients that present to therapy reporting that they are the “therapist for all their friends” or that “everyone asks them for advice” have a healthy identification with their Queen. The over identified Queen is not content to advise power, but wants to control it from the shadows as a puppeteer. Overidentification with the Queen leads patients to become obsessed with subtly influencing other people as extensions of themselves and power. Manipulative patients, who begin to hold their altruism over the heads of those they are helping are on the road to over identification with the Queen. Therapists should be aware of the functioning of this archetype, as it is the role of the therapist to play The Queen in the patient’s life during the process of therapy.
The over identified Queen as a mother does not want children to develop as individuals outside of the family or have a personal identity. Children are to remain a part of her and only exist as her accessory and a reflection of her purposes and her values. The over identified Queen wants to know all her children’s secrets, and to get to tell them exactly who they should become. Because patients who had a mother over identified with her own Queen never had the chance to listen to their own inner voice during development they will present to therapy with a bothersome inner critic that reflects the internalized critical voice of the parent. This overwhelming voice of inner criticism is the implanted voice of the parent that did not want their Child to exist outside their own sphere.

The King Archetype 1/6

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The King is our sense of systemic power or our sense of power within society . The King is both the father of the family and of society. He has a larger plan for others and sees how all pieces of the system work and what different types of people need. This larger plan comes from creativity and imagination, but it is the practical imagination of planning and developing communities and systems. The King not only wants to improve himself, but to improve others linked to him as an extension of himself. The appropriately identified King is a proud father.
We need the King in order to manage our households, supervise employees, or volunteer in leadership roles. The fundamental anxiety the King manages is the fear that there is no larger plan structuring others lives. The King fears anarchy. The King lets us take the reins and provide leadership when we see that no one else can. The King is able to organize the many individual Warriors behind a single banner. The King is order, organization and unity.
It is healthy and positive to have a vision for a better world that we would like to see our life and works contribute toward. Without the King we cannot have hope for our families or for the world. Patients who were raised being systematically excluded or oppressed are likely to be under identified with their King. If society has rejected or oppressed them their entire lives they have been taught that it doesn’t want them, and will have difficulty believing others will let them lead. If we do not believe we have any power over the world, it is difficult to function within it. These patients will be plagued with interpersonal difficulty until the under identification is resolved.
Patients under identified with their King will avoid any position where they have responsibility for or power over others. They were often punished for being angry or assertive in their families of origin and felt they were not allowed to hold power. Often these patients will have anger “turned off” and have extreme anxiety when circumstances force them to judge others, even accurately, or when they are angry. These patients will have difficulty reconciling anxiety when they have a moral standard that others violate. They do not want to let go of their own moral compass but also are uncomfortable when others fail at being moral or good by their own standard.
Patients who are under identified with their King may be highly competent and successful, but still remain highly individual and atomized, clinging to solely personal power or adhere to strict moral standards they refuse to apply to others. . They may express hopelessness or even contempt for ideas relating to improving family or government systems, even though they could otherwise be highly successful in either.
Patients over identified with their King will mistrust and criticize all authority because it is not their own. They will play contrarian during any discussion of politics or religion and often family issues. They will often get into conflicts with superiors at work but secretly feel unheard or misunderstood. During these times they are reliving their experiences in their own families of origin. Extreme identification with the King will leave patients listless and unsatisfied no matter how much power they attain. Extreme over identification with the King means that there is no amount of power that will ever make one feel fulfilled. Life becomes a competition. It does not become a competition with individuals like the warrior, but a competition with all “great” men from history. Total overidentification makes one want to hold power and influence over others in every domain of life.
Patients over identified with their King will rarely present for therapy of their own volition. These patients can become tyrants to their friends, families and colleagues. Even though these patients may do things that society would consider immoral they will never see themselves as evil. These patients see themselves as saviors that want to save an unappreciative society or family by making them great. Patients who are under identified with their Magician and Warrior often over identify with their King in order to compensate for their failure to develop their own domain of internal (intuition) or external (accomplishment )personal power. These patients often are prone to fantasies about what would happen if they were in charge. They will never see themselves as immoral, but only as misunderstood heroes.