Excavating the Unconscious: The Ziji Art Method (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781763537705)

The book is a comprehensive exploration of Ziji's life, art, and psychological journey, intertwined with poetry and reflections on trauma, relationships, and healing.

• Author's Background: Ziji, a writer, visual artist, and former clinical psychologist.
• Artistic and Therapeutic Practice: His art and poetry practice, initially unintended as therapeutic, helps unearth body memories and generational trauma.
• Life Drawing Sessions: Life drawing sessions with Saskia involve a deep, non-verbal connection, focusing on authenticity and mutual energy exchange.
• Exploring Relationships: Ziji and Saskia's relationship is built on mutual understanding, complexity, and a shared commitment to truth and creativity.
• Personal History and Trauma: Ziji shares his traumatic family history, including his mother's death during his birth and his father's war-induced psychological struggles.
• Healing: He recounts his experiences of abuse at a boarding school and the long journey towards acknowledgment and healing.
• Therapy: He discusses his use of Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing (EMD*R) and other bodywork techniques to address trauma.
• Art as Therapy: Ziji views his art practice as a way to process trauma, allowing unconscious material to surface and be expressed creatively.
• Couple Therapy Insights: He integrates his art practice into couple therapy sessions, using it to foster deep emotional and spiritual connections.
• Philosophical Reflections: Ziji reflects on the interconnectedness of life, the impact of intergenerational trauma, and the importance of conscious living.

There's something revealing about how we disguise our most intimate revelations. When Ziji offers this "method," what he's really giving us is his body-not the sanitised, instructional bullet points of artistic process, but the messy, contradictory evidence of a life lived in flesh that remembers everything. Like the best memoirs, it teaches through vulnerable example rather than directive, showing us not just what to do but how one person has survived by doing it. It's a body, offered to us in fragments, trusting us to assemble the whole. Sharon Stiplegate PhD Jungian Analyst in Private Practice, Tübinger Stra e Stuttgart.