Living in the Borderland: The Evolution of Consciousness and the Challenge of Healing Trauma

Jerome S. Bernstein, Jungian Analyst

There are many people whose experience of reality is outside the mainstream of Western culture; often they see themselves as abnormal because they have no articulated frame of reference for their experience. The concept of the Borderland personality explains much of their experience.

Many perceive themselves as modern day canaries carrying the pain of a traumatized ecology.

Building on Jungian theory, Jerome Bernstein argues that a greater openness to transrational reality experienced by Borderland personalities allows new possibilities for understanding and healing confounding clinical and developmental conundrums. He describes his clinical research which links Navajo medicine and Western treatment modalities for the treatment of trauma, environmental illness and other Borderland syndromes.