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This paper was first presented by its author at the Joint Conference of Jungian Analysts at Carmel, California in 1985. Although we are informed that Rothenberg is ‘especially interested in the relationship between disease and the psyche’, I feel that this particular publication represents and symbolises, for its author, an important focus of achievement. The paper approaches its subject in a comprehensive, informative and fascinating manner. The fact that the author's own personal wounds are included as relevant illustrations to her subject has undoubtedly enhanced its quality.
Keloids are described clinically as autonomous ‘non-malignant’ overgrowths of scar tissue, usually arising as a result of traumata, but occasionally making their appearance with apparent spontaneity. I have used the term ‘non-malignant’ rather than ‘benign’, because the latter might, quite incorrectly, imply ‘relatively trouble-free’. In fact, they can cause considerable physical pain (itching, stabbing, burning etc.) as well as psychological pain as a result of the disfigurement that they can create. ‘Keloid’ is derived from the Greek word meaning ‘claw’, and the keloid can extend into the neighbouring tissues, not unlike the claws of a crab. Attempts at removing keloid scars often aggravates the situation: ‘Like the Hydra of Greek legend, it grows two heads each time one is excised’. Rothenberg's paper, as I understand it, includes two distinct yet interrelated ideas or concepts for the reader to consider.
The first, is that keloids arising in the (apparent) absence of trauma, might, in certain individuals, do so as a response to psychic stress. Support for that idea is given by linking the emergence of her own scars to specific traumatic events in her life.
The second idea proposes the existence in the collective unconscious of the archetype of the keloid. This can emerge as a primordial image (perhaps in a dream) or can become ‘somatised’ and be revealed in the body as a keloid scar. Rothen