Trauma and the soul : a psycho-spiritual approach to human development and its interruption
Publication Information
London : Routledge, 2013.
Physical Description
xvii, 339 pages, 5 pages of plates : illustrations (some color) ; 24 cm
Summary
"In Trauma and the Soul, Donald Kalsched continues the exploration he began in his first book, The Inner World of Trauma (1996)--this time going further into the mystical or spiritual moments that often occur around the intimacies of psychoanalytic work. Through extended clinical vignettes, including therapeutic dialogue and dreams, he shows how depth psychotherapy with trauma's survivors can open both analytic partners to 'another world' of non-ordinary reality in which daimonic powers reside, both light and dark. This mytho-poetic world, he suggests, is not simply a defensive product of our struggle with the harsh realities of living as Freud suggested, but is an everlasting fact of human experience--a mystery that is often at the very center of the healing process, and yet at other times, strangely resists it. With these 'two worlds' in focus, Kalsched explores a variety of themes as he builds, chapter by chapter, an integrated psycho-spiritual approach to trauma and its treatment ..."--Provided by publisher.
Contents
- Trauma and life-saving encounters with the numinous
- Loss and recovery of the soul-child
- Dissociation and the dark side of the defensive system : Dante's encounter with "Dis" in the inferno
- Trauma, transformation, and transcendence: the case of Mike
- Wholeness and anti-wholeness defenses
- Psychoanalytic approaches to the inner world: applying theory to the cases so far
- Innocence, its loss, and recovery : reflections on St. Exupéry's the little prince
- C.G. Jung's divided self : learning to live "between the worlds"
- Dis-memberment and re-memberment: reflections on a case of embodied dream work in light of Grimm's fairytale, the woman without hands.