English article: The Horse-Complex - about the Psychodynamic Impact of Horses in Therapy

Abstract

The “horse-complex“ is introduced as a new term and described as a multi-dimensional construct in its meaning for patient and therapist alike in the sense of C. G. Jung‘s analytical psychology. Here, the author falls back on her over 20 years of experience of personal medical-psychotherapy in psychotherapeutic riding at a psychiatricalpsychoterapeutic hospital and as a supervisor of advanced training measures in psychotherapeutic riding. She describes transference and counter-transference phenomena that not only have an impact on the relation between patient and therapist, but also on the relation between the therapist and the therapy horse on the one hand and the patient and the therapy horse on the other hand. This makes psychotherapeutic work with horses extremely multi-façeted and demanding, since the horse acts as a relationship object in the here and now, as a projection field and object of identification, but also as an archetypical symbol in connection with the collective unconscious for patients and therapists alike.