In. There is trauma and the soul. Donald Kalsched began his exploration in his first book. There is a world of trauma. This time we are going further into the mystical or spiritual moments that occur around the intimacies of psychoanalytic work. 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 eternal fact of human experience that is often at the very center of the healing process.

Kalsched explores a variety of themes as he builds, chapter by chapter, an integrated psycho-spiritual approach to trauma and its treatment.

• images of the lost soul-child in dreams and how this “child” represents an essential core of aliveness that is both protected and persecuted by the psyche’s defenses;
• Dante’s guided descent into the Inferno of Hell as a paradigm for the psychotherapy process and its inevitable struggle with self-destructive energies;
• childhood innocence and its central role in a person’s spiritual life seen through the story of St. Exupéry’s The Little Prince ;
• how clinical attention to implicit processes in the relational field, as well as discoveries in body-based affective neuroscience are making trauma treatment more effective;
• the life of C.G. Jung as it portrays his early trauma, his soul’s retreat into an inner sanctuary, and his gradual recovery of wholeness through the integration of his divided self.

The book restores the mystery to the work. Through working together, ordinary patients and ordinary therapists can see the reality of the human soul and the depth of the spirit. There is trauma and the soul. Those with a spiritual orientation will be of particular interest to practicing therapists.

Donald Kalsched. He is a Jungian analyst in private practice in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and a training analyst with the Inter-Regional Society of Jungian Analysts. He lectures on the subject of early trauma and its treatment, and is the author of numerous articles in analytical psychology. His books are included. There is a world of trauma. The year 1996.