Integrating Spiritual Emergency Through Visionary Art Therapy: A Jungian Autoethnography of Psychospiritual Trauma Healing to Benefit the Collective
Excerpt-Nisha Gupta-Journal of Humanistic Psychology
Nisha Gupta - Abstract - Journal of Humanistic Psychology 1 –27 © The Author(s) 2025
Spiritual emergency is a phenomenon wherein individuals undergoing psychological crises may experience altered states of consciousness with transpersonal themes resembling symptoms of psychopathology. Rather than mere pathology, these altered states can catalyze a psychospiritual evolution for the individual in a generative direction, including flashes of wisdom that can benefit the collective. Considering the limits of biomedical treatment approaches to support these individuals, this paper seeks to formalize visionary art therapy as an art therapy intervention to facilitate integration for people undergoing spiritual emergencies and to honor the universal wisdom arising amid their altered states. As a depth psychologist and artist, I share an autoethnographic case study of my own spiritual emergency following a traumatic loss, for which I embraced visionary art therapy to express spiritual insights arising during my trauma-healing journey. Referencing Jung, I describe my process of painting tarot cards as archetypal images from the collective unconscious, which together depict a six-stage process of spiritual evolution that can occur amid trauma healing. My artwork seeks to offer universal wisdom for all people experiencing a dark night of the soul induced by trauma. I include practical recommendations for psychotherapists to facilitate visionary art therapy for clients undergoing spiritual emergencies.
Keywords visionary art therapy, spiritual emergency, Jungian autoethnography
“Medicine and disease heal each other. The entire universe is medicine. What is your true self?”—Zen Koan
In 2018, following the achievement of my clinical psychology Ph.D. and the dissolution of my long-term partnership, I entered a period of traumatic grief. The depths of my grief were staggering, throwing me into chaotic universes embedded in my psyche since infancy as unrelenting starstorms of sorrow, loneliness, rage, terror, and hopelessness. These galaxies could not be traversed by the rational mind alone; they were exceptional experiences that transcended any logic or reason. So instead, I embarked on these otherworldly travels by way of altered states of consciousness, which was the only vehicle through which I could navigate this mystical realm that depth psychologist Donald Kalsched (2013) calls “the psychospiritual world of trauma.” It beckoned me, and all I could do was surrender.
Those dark nights of the soul were the most frightful I have encountered— fetal position crying out with anguish in the middle of the night, terrified of my third-story apartment windows and myself. My desperation was assuaged only by my Christian friend murmuring reminders on the phone at two in the morning that God loves me unconditionally, even in my madness. Though I knew myself to be a Hindu, this paternalistic vision of God as a Benevolent Father brought me life-saving comfort when I needed it most—a sacred gift of compassion that exceeds all language, finds expression only in tears.
Those nights were the darkest, but the heights were the highest I have ever been. I would wander the city in daylight and see flashes of God everywhere, sending me love and support when I needed it most. I would have conversations with strangers in grocery stores who said things to me at just the right time, and I knew it was God speaking through them to send me messages of hope. Or I’d create a new painting—I was compulsively making art at the time to contain my overwhelming psychic experiences—and I sensed there was a divine intelligence sending me images to paint to guide me through my madness. I began to see God as my Eternal Beloved, always in communion with me, making love to me at all times of day or night. I began to sense that I am never alone, I am always loved, Love is everywhere, and I am Love. During those days of spiritual awakening while immersed in deep psychic pain, a friend gave me a book of Rumi poetry and suddenly I became a Sufi saint—praying to Allah five times a day, forehead to floor, kissing the ground with humility and gratitude at the sacredness of life.
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