“Looking back makes it possible to move ahead, because looking back revives the imagination of the archetypical child, fons et origo, either in a state of complete helplessness or facing the future that lies ahead. Rebirth would be a word without sense if not for the implicit dissolution, death itself, from where this rebirth comes.

Jacopo Valli, a psychoanalyst from Milan, draws on James Hillman’s Saggio su Pan (An Essay on Pan) to explain what drives his patients to ask for help. In general he deals with marketing or communication professionals who, engaged in stressful work, are victims of unremitting panic attacks or suffer from insomnia. There are also government workers who, tired of routine work and unaware of the fact that they’ve fallen into depression, have lost their creative impulses. And the cure, in these cases, consists of helping them understand that this unhappiness can become an occasion for rebirth; a moment to retrace the thread that has been severed from their deepest self, and recognize their repressed desires. In other words: to change.

Yes. Because in most cases the patients of the forty-year-old Jungian psychotherapist and psychosomatist are neurotic and unable to support the conditioning or the restraints imposed by work or their private lives and, therefore, feel imprisoned in roles that are distant from their own inclinations.

“These panic attacks,” explains the expert in psychosomatic illnesses “is nothing more than an unconscious desire to die, which takes on a physiological form in a new life. In this sense, change is similar to an initiatory end, which must revive the energy that is being exhausted. Obviously, in order to reach this objective it is necessary to prune the dead branches.” Valli, who first moved from illness to transforming his own life, now guides patients in their painful but gradual journey. “In the end,” he explains “they’ve found equilibrium. But this will always be in flux because being balanced means being modular - that is capable of changing. Flexible. It also means accepting the transformations that occur in life, whether it is losing a job or morning the loss of a loved one or feeling abandoned, with courage and motivation.”

For Valli, anyway, “it is always necessary to understand ourselves and the role we have in this world, listening to ourselves incessantly every day in order to cohere with our core and find the internal strength needed to confront the external conditions. In this sense, it is better to refuse, at least in part, the role that has been assigned to us, so as not to suffocate all of the impulses that lead to our growth into individuals.” And illness can be beneficial because it forces us to look inside ourselves in order to completely heal and change our behavior.

“I understand,” he explains “that it is not easy. For years I was stuck at home because of a psychosomatic colitis, which I haven’t had since I changed work and engaged in some soul searching.” Changing at forty, fifty or beyond, according to the expert, is possible, or, rather, necessary. “It is pointless,” he adds “to ignore it, continuing on even when there are unequivocal signs that the moment to change course has come. At a certain point in our lives it is our physiological state that causes us to turn. Or it should be.”

It is easier to believe in it than to do it says Carl Gustav Jung, the founding father of contemporary analytical psychology. For him change is an event in some ways ineluctable, an evolution, which is part of the destiny of men. In our DNA we each have an evolutionary incentive. “So,” says the psychoanalyst “it is easy to think that if the incentive for change is seated in the head and in the spirit of every individual, then transformation is a natural process. But, instead, change is usually a source of fear for those who must confront it. Great fear. It is destabilizing, upsetting old habits, disengaging them. Whoever has carried out significant change in their lives, especially as they get older, has experienced this sense of disequilibrium to some degree.”

So, what happens in the mind of a person who realizes that they need to alter their existence in some way? “The person,” replies Valli “senses that the quality of their life is dismal and begins to understand that they are not at peace. Or they become physically ill to some degree or another.” And so it is best to intervene immediately.

“If fear prevails over the incentive for change,” he adds “we remain immobile. The consequences are varied: we get sick and the internal unhappiness causes us anxiety or sadness, we lose interest in our lives, we turn ourselves off. By not giving verse to the other voices in our personality, we impoverish the quality of our lives. Change is enriching because ‘we are also something else,’ according to what Hillman calls the ‘polytheism of the spirit.’ Within us are many parts which want to be heard.” But how? The energy for fueling change comes from the libido, intended as creative energy, which we can draw from for an analytical journey of consciousness, uncovering those obscure parts of our selves. Freeing our blocked energy, we are able to take on everyday life.

“Today,” continues Valli “unhappiness is wide-spread. Western society is sick. We confuse pathology with normality. In what way? By no longer establishing working hours, having too little time for one’s self, for friends, for children and the family, bringing about emotional dissatisfaction. What’s more, our Western economic-social structure is opposed to change; it hinders it. As the writer and philosopher Zygmunt Bauman points out: “In this society where we live everyone has a fixed role which often remains just that.”

And Italian culture? “Well” he says, smiling “we are a bunch of over-grown children, relying on the welfare of others. Those with the most difficulties accept change – losing a job, being put on leave. But if a company is losing money, it can’t stay open. It must reconvert itself, just as the workers who are fired must reinvent themselves. I understand that for those with a family losing a job is a true drama. But in this case the only thing to do is to accept the change. Look within yourself, find your repressed creativity and renew your self. It will be a greater achievement. And my advice also applies to those who are constantly working to maintain themselves but consider their work mediocre and unsatisfying.” It’s also important to have a boss with emotional intelligence, but, naturally, this is not always possible. So, sometimes you’ve just got to go it alone.

One piece of advice? Valli goes back to Jung and says “Give to society during the first forty years. That is, adapt ourselves to the environment and, perhaps, start a family. During the second part of our lives, our task is to search for our hidden identity. Obviously, it is necessary to take into account the conditions in which we live, such as the current economic crisis. But there is no other choice. In this journey, according to Valli, women would have a greater advantage, because they know that there are cycles to respect and fixed rules that need to be recognized and dealt with so as not to become entrapped.

So, if fear is immobilizing, there is nothing left but Jung. The tales, the symbolism and the esotericism can help. They offer alternative lives and they guarantee what, in technical terms, is called the restoration of the self. If nothing else, it is one step towards something new!