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Early Trauma and Dreams: Archetypal Defenses of the Personal Spirit
September 17, 1999 @ 7:30 pm - 9:30 pm PDT
Experiences in early childhood that cause unbearable psychic pain or anxiety (trauma) can leave the personality and the human spirit threatened with destruction. In this lecture, using dream examples from the clinical situation and the fairy tale of Rapunzel, we will see how an archetypal defense emerges to save the imperishable human spirit from further trauma, but at the price of encapsulating a core of selfhood, thus cutting it off from life. Psychotherapy of this trauma complex will be discussed.
Related Workshop: From Bewitchment to Enchantment: Transformational Process in the Psychoanalysis of Early Trauma
Donald Kalsched, Ph.D., is a Jungian psychoanalyst and clinical psychologist who practices in Brunswick, Maine. He is a senior faculty member and supervisor with the Inter-Regional Society of Jungian Analysts (IRSJA), and lectures nationally and internationally on the subject of early trauma, its effect on the inner world, and its treatment. His celebrated book The Inner World of Trauma: Archetypal Defenses of the Personal Spirit (Routledge 1996) explores the interface between contemporary psychoanalytic theory and Jungian thought as it relates to practical clinical work with the survivors of early childhood trauma. His next book, Trauma and the Soul: A Psychospiritual Approach to Human Development and its Interruption (Routledge, 2013) explores some of the mystical or “spiritual” dimensions of clinical work with trauma-survivors. He and his wife Robin live in Topsham, Maine, during the winter, and summer in Newfoundland, Canada.