Received: April 30, 2019 Revised: June 18, 2011 Accepted: June 28, 2019
Abstract
The symbolism of the willow, with its healing energy for addiction, can be considered in terms of its religious, folkloric, and mythological aspects as in Marion Woodman’s book The Ravaged Bridegroom - Masculinity in Women. This study concerned the healing process of a female client formerly obsessed with an addiction not separated from the Self. The client grasped the willow as a symbol of female energy and subsequently was reborn with renewed feminine vitality. The female healing energy of the willow connected her abandoned body to her soul. The vitality of the willow empowered the client to heal her animus of addiction, learn what her body wanted from the boundary of life and death, and realize what her soul desired. Her body, through consciousness raising, truly embraced the deity, or Self, which she had struggled unilaterally before to connect with herself. The totality, created by archetypes, meant a deep base of personality, accepted consciousness and unconsciousness and transcended the ego.