Dreaming, Mourning, Transformation, and Truth: Shifa Haq and Willow Pearson in Conversation

ABSTRACT

This conversation between Willow Pearson and Shifa Haq explores themes that are catalyzed by Shifa Haq’s book In Search of Return: Mourning the Disappearances in Kashmir. These themes include dreaming, mourning, transformation, and truth. Being deeply affected by trauma anchors the conversation. Creative work through art and song and its transformative power is touched upon. Psychotherapy as a transformative practice, on the level of soul work, threads the conversation.

KEY WORDS:

• apparition
• creativity
• dreaming
• Masood Hussain
• Kashmir
• mourning
• psychotherapy
• song
• Charlotte Small Thompson
• transcendence
• trauma
• truth

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Willow Pearson Trimbach

SHIFA HAQ is psychoanalytic psychotherapist and assistant professor of psychology in the School of Human Studies at Ambedkar University Delhi. She serves as an associate editor for the journals Psychoanalysis, Culture and Society and Psychoanalytic Dialogues. Her book In Search of Return: Mourning the Disappearances in Kashmir was published in 2021. Correspondence: [email protected].

WILLOW PEARSON TRIMBACH is director of clinical training and associate professor of the Clinical Psychology Department at the California Institute of Integral Studies. A psychologist, psychotherapist, and music therapist, she has a private practice in Oakland, California (drwillowpearson.com). Dr. Pearson Trimbach is also a singer and songwriter, with six albums of original music and a seventh album of Tibetan Buddhist songs of realization (visit www.lionessroars.org/music/burning to hear the song). She is co-editor and contributing author of The Spiritual Psyche in Psychotherapy: Mysticism, Intersubjectivity, and Psychoanalysis, published by Routledge in 2021. Correspondence: [email protected].