Trauma and Values in Analytical Psychology: Ethical and Clinical Principles.

The issue of values seems to be highly relevant to that of trauma and vice versa. Trauma-informed psychotherapy, regardless of approach, appears to be grounded in certain core values that guide treatments and provide the ethical space necessary for the healing process. In this article, these values will be explored by considering their therapeutic function. Analytical Psychology has something distinctive to offer to this theme, showing the origin of these values and indicating that they are only possible as a result of a constructive process that tends towards wholeness and integrity in intrapsychic, interpersonal and social spaces. In this regard, the Jungian formulation of the self and its natural dissociability seems a central conceptualisation for understanding both the effects of trauma and the therapeutic and reparative power of certain guiding values in therapy. Psychological trauma is the result of violence generated in situations where the fabric of values has been torn, not only at the individual level but also at the family, community and social levels. Addressing the relationship between trauma, violence and values and the distinctive contribution of analytical psychology sheds light on the nature of the therapeutic endeavour, which, like the psyche, appears to have an ethical basis.