The Wounded Healer
Chiron
The one who heals by virtue of a wound.
The Wounded Healer: what does it mean in analytical psychology?
“Only the wounded physician heals,” Jung wrote. The healer’s own hurt is the measure of his power to heal, since it is from his own wound that he knows the sufferer’s, and the analyst who thinks himself whole is of little use. Later Jungians made the wounded healer an archetype of the therapeutic relationship itself.
The Wounded Healer: where does it appear in myth and tradition?
Chiron the centaur, wounded by an arrow of Heracles that would not let him die, and teacher of Asclepius in medicine; the shaman whose initiatory sickness makes him a healer; the suffering servant of Isaiah, “with his stripes we are healed.”
From the Sources
In Ovid, Chiron's daughter Ocyrrhoë prophesies that her father, now immortal, will wish he could die when he is tormented by the blood of a baneful serpent in his wounded limbs.
“Thou likewise, dear father, now immortal, and produced at thy nativity, on the condition of enduring for ever, wilt then wish that thou couldst die, when thou shalt be tormented on receiving the blood of a baneful serpent in thy wounded limbs”
Ovid, The Metamorphoses of Ovid, Vol. I, Books I-VII, Book II, the fable of Ocyrrhoë. Literally translated with notes and explanations by Henry T. Riley, M.A.; with an introduction by Edward Brooks, Jr.; Copyright, 1899, by David McKay; Press of Sherman & Co., Philadelphia. The text, read in part
Bulfinch records that the centaur Chiron was renowned for his skill in medicine, music and prophecy, that the greatest heroes were his pupils, and that the infant Aesculapius was entrusted to him.
“Chiron was instructed by Apollo and Diana, and was renowned for his skill in hunting, medicine, music, and the art of prophecy. The most distinguished heroes of Grecian story were his pupils. Among the rest the infant--Aesculapius was intrusted to his charge by Apollo, his father.”
Thomas Bulfinch, Bulfinch's Mythology: The Age of Fable, The Age of Chivalry, Legends of Charlemagne, The Age of Fable, on the Centaurs. Complete in one volume, Project Gutenberg eBook #4928. The text, read in part
Each passage is quoted from the text named, which the press fetched and read, and was checked word for word against a fresh copy of it; the link opens that copy. Passages are given as printed, without the editors’ footnote numbers, and with words broken across lines joined.
Where to Read
- Memories, Dreams, Reflections (1962)
- “Fundamental Questions of Psychotherapy” (1951), CW 16
- Mircea Eliade, Shamanism (1951)
Jung’s writings are cited by the volume of the Collected Works (CW), Bollingen Series / Princeton, 1953–79.
Related Symbols
Also among Heroes and Tricksters
“Learn as much as you can about symbolism; then forget it all when you are analysing a dream.”
Cite This Entry
“The Wounded Healer.” In Symbols of the Psyche, the Symbolarium. The Thinking Press, 2026. https://thethinkingpress.org/symbolarium/psyche/wounded-healer.
Nearby in the alphabet: The Wolf: Devouring hunger, and a fierce kind of nurture. The Womb: The vessel of life, and of rebirth. Yellow: The yellowing, as the dawn becomes day. The Abduction: Seized by the depths: the innocent carried below.