The Quiet Wisdom of the Wounded Healer

IN THE WOUNDED HEALER: Ministry in Contemporary Society, Catholic theologian and priest Henri J.M. Nouwen analyzes how the church fails to address the heart of our collective pain and longing. Nouwen presents a paradigm for renewed Christian leadership and care founded on the archetype of the “wounded healer.” More than 50 years after the publication of The Wounded Healer in 1972, we continue to struggle — both individually and societally — with the “wounds” Nouwen names: alienation, separation, isolation, and loneliness. Whether we’re ministers or not, we need the gentle wisdom of the wounded healer to build a more loving, just world.

While the concept goes back at least as far as Plato, the term “wounded healer” was coined by psychoanalyst and doctor Carl Jung. To demonstrate the link between personal suffering and the capacity to care for others, Jung draws on the Greek myth of Chiron. Chiron is a centaur who, due to severe physical pain, becomes an important healer and teacher. Nouwen extends this principle to ministry, calling for church leaders to cultivate “a deeper understanding of the ways in which [they] can make [their] own wounds available as a source of healing.” For both Jung and Nouwen, this work develops depth and compassion. Nouwen writes, “For a compassionate [person] nothing human is alien: no joy and no sorrow, no way of living and no way of dying.”

Nouwen describes two common modes of addressing the social effects of woundedness: mysticism (“the inner way”) and revolution. Nouwen supports what he calls the “third way,” the “Christian way,” found in the ultimate wounded healer — Jesus. He argues, “Jesus was a revolutionary, who did not become an extremist, since he did not offer an ideology, but Himself. He was also a mystic, who did not use his intimate relationship with God to avoid the social evils of his time, but shocked his milieu to the point of being executed as a rebel.”

This reminds me of Julian of Norwich, who saw her own suffering as fertile ground to learn about divine love. Her visions compelled her to write and counsel members of her community, as they endured the violence of war and the horrors of plague.

Elevating clear-eyed leadership and genuine care is challenging in practice, and wounded-healer leadership is not without risks. Without the qualities of compassion and humility, wounded healers can easily wound others, especially in spaces where power is unshared and top-down. Nouwen’s insights, however, invite a new paradigm for leadership itself: communities where power is decentralized, shared, and rich in honesty and accountability. We are each flawed and yet possess unique wisdom, but we need each other to envision healing and liberation.

We live in a wounded world, as wounded people. This quiet work is a part of social healing: softening our eyes to see suffering, softening our ears to listen to each other’s pain, softening our hearts to become more courageous and active in this time of global turmoil. As Nouwen reminds us, “nothing human is alien.”