As Angelou’s story suggests, many people respond to loss by healing in others the wounds that they themselves have suffered. Angelou did this through writing, but the process takes many forms. Indeed, the “wounded healer,” a term coined by the psychologist Carl Jung in 1951, is one of humanity’s oldest archetypes. In Greek myth, the centaur Chiron was injured by a poisoned arrow that gave him terrible pain, but also curative powers. In shamanistic cultures, often healers must first undergo an initiation process involving great misery. In Judaism, the Messiah’s powers derive from his own
...more
