| Abstract: | The last 20 years have seen huge progress in our understanding of the injured psyche. Inner space is opening in a way that is helping us heal the deep psychological wounds that many of us carry. Donald Kalsched has been exploring the archetypal dimensions of the trauma process. His interest arose out of his work as a Jungian analyst: Many of his clients got stuck in their therapeutic journey, or worse, they tried to sabotage it—Kalsched wanted to understand why. He discovered that most of them had suffered childhood trauma. He asked: What is it about trauma that leads people to sabotage the road to healing? What systems come into play to help a child to survive psychological trauma, and how do these systems limit later development? His conclusion was that the psyche's internal response to trauma sets up a “self-care system” designed to ensure the person's survival, but that this defensive system ultimately retraumatizes the person from within, cutting off life-saving attachments to others and eclipsing all possibilities of true-self living in the real world. This theory has had a huge impact because it changes our understanding of what happens in psychological trauma and so opens the door to healing. |
