Thank you for sharing this, it was a good reminder of some things.
As a wounded healer myself, my main critique is that wounded healers don't always heal themselves. "Overcoming" is the positive spin that modern people put on the archetype of the wounded healer. Maybe spin is too harsh of word. Maybe people are just being hopeful because there's still room for hope. Sometimes the wound is forever and they have to live with it, but in learning to do so, they build vast wisdom about healing that can help others. Or sometimes there is no service at all, they simply suffer and suffering itself is the trial. Sometimes hope dies and there is no transcending that. Many spiritual people die in the dirt every day on this planet. But everyone loves a good story about the guy with no legs who runs marathons now with his prosthesis, or the quadriplegic in the wheel chair who is one of the world's greatest theoretical physicists. Not many people talk about the many, many more disabled people who simply toil in obscurity while doing insane amounts of inner work that will never be shared with the world.
If one becomes neurotic and avoidant of their wound, I would not argue that this necessary makes them "more bound" to their wound, it means they are extremely traumatized by it. I have had a deadly illness for the better part of a decade now. When times are good, I enjoy them to the max. But when my illness relapses, it is always devastating, no matter how many times I've survived it.
Not everybody's trial looks the same and sometimes neurosis is part of the process. You can mentally/emotionally trick yourself to put a positive spin on it all you like, but when your body is deteriorating fast, optimism won't save you from what's coming. A different type of headspace is usually required, at least that's been my experience.
That's the problem I have with Jung and many other psychologists who idealize these God-like archetypes. They are trying to depict a perfect vision of healing according to the hubris of science and religion. The truth is... we all superficially know what healing should look like, but we don't understand its depths. Perhaps the most fucked up, ruined, unsolvable people on this planet are doing some kind of important soul work that will never be apparent to others in their mind-body to the world at large.
"The mystery of life isn't a problem to solve, but a reality to experience. A process that cannot be understood by stopping it. We must move with the flow of the process. We must join it. We must flow with it." A cool quote from the latest Dune, which I saw last night.
