Bradley is a psychotherapist in private practice with an office at Mountain Waves Healing Arts. Dr. Olson has a particular interest in Jungian Analytical Psychology and Mythological Studies, and his work with clients is heavily influenced by these two traditions. Dr. Olson works mainly with adults on issues of spirituality, identity, and transitions into mid-life.
What is mythology, and what is its connection to psychotherapy? Myth as metaphors for cosmology, psychology, or ideology, for instance, is mythology just as much as is the study of ancient texts and stories. Myth tells us how to cope with the suffering of life; what Hamlet calls the “heartaches and the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to.” These are the losses of possessions, of loved ones, physical illnesses, and the injustice of life. Aeschylus tells us that, “we suffer into truth,” and Simone Weil suggests even more specifically how we do so: “Misfortunes leave wounds which bleed drop by drop even in sleep; thus little by little they train man by force and dispose him to wisdom in spite of himself. Man must learn to think of himself as a limited and dependent being; and only suffering teaches him this.”
Myths give us a map of sorts to the Underworld, and give us some “local knowledge” so that we needn’t panic or give up hope when we are confronted with “the dark night of the soul.” Psychotherapy is like the Midrash story of the argument between love and truth. To break the tie, God hurled truth to the ground, smashing it to pieces. From then on truth was splintered all over in fragments, like a jigsaw puzzle, and while a person might find a piece, it had very little meaning until he could find others who had different pieces of the puzzle, and thus slowly they could fit their pieces of truth together to make some sense of things. That’s what we do in therapy; we fit our puzzle pieces together and make sense of our lives.
To schedule an appointment with Bradley, please call him at (928) 526-1961.