Edward E. Wilson

“The Maxx is an American comic book and animation character created by Sam Kieth and published by Image Comics. The comic book spawned an animated series that aired on the MTV network” (Wikipedia, The Maxx).

This piece is based on the MTV animation.

The Maxx is a fascinating fictional exploration of deep trauma therapy, about facing ourselves and having the courage to grow.

The Maxx himself is a projection of Julie’s defense, the mask, over her trauma, the rabbit.

Other therapeutically useful elements that The Maxx presents is The Outback, which is a person’s unconscious territory or dreamscape; a power animal, which guides a person towards growth; a heroic or mythic self, in Julie Winters’s case it is The Leopard Queen and finally, an inner child fixed before/at the moment of trauma.

Julie starts to heal when she makes contact with child-Julie it her sacred space. This is a space where The Maxx, her trauma and defense, can’t exist.

The Maxx also shows that the trauma doesn’t have to be some kind of abuse but rather is a situation that the person just can’t cope with  at their present level of development. That experience is then encoded in their defense and on a certain line of development they remain fixed, continually acting out the trauma in its encoded form.

By putting the parts of the trauma/defense system in communication with each other that system begins to break down and from that comes breakthrough.

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