The Inner World of Trauma: Archetypal Defences of the Personal Spirit

The Inner World of Trauma is a truly compelling, moving and important book. Kalsched shows that when a child is traumatised, or shamed for its genuine and healthy needs, an inner figure is constellated in the child's psyche and the job of that inner figure is to protect the child from being further shamed and re-traumatised. What is more the inner protector will do whatever it has to do in order to prevent a repeat of the original, unbearable experience - and if that means turning into a daimonic, destructive and self-destructive inner persecutor, then so be it. With the aid of real stories, dreams, myths and fairy stories, Kalsched describes some of the strategies employed by protector-persecutor to prevent and possibility of re-traumatisation. Protector-persecutor may (1) split the personality so that the traumatised child dissociates from his or her experiences, (2) take the person into to depression to prevent him or her having hope of something better (and thus opening itself to dissapointment), (3)encase the person in a world of fantasy, or (4) numb the person through addiction. If none of those work the inner daimon may lead the person to suicide. More-often-than-not the strategies of the inner protector-persecutor mean that the person is stuck in a cycle where the 'trauma' is repeated time and time again. Every time the person has a chance of escaping into life the protector-persecutor deems the risk of retrumatisation to be too high, and so sabotages the path to freedom and emotional health. Worse, the inner figure fails to take account of changing circumstances, and it fails to recognise that the traumatised child has grown up and now has new, and healthier, ways of defending him or her self. The inner protector gets stuck at the point where the original damage occured. Kalsched explains that in order to find freedom from protector-persecutor a person has to become conscious of how this inner figure is suffocating life, and then the person has to find the courage to do battle with the protector-persecutor. All that Kalshed writes about resonates deeply with my own experience. I am not a therapist, and I struggled with some of the more technical language, but having read The Inner World of Trama I now have a sense of of what drives much of my destructive and self-destructive behaviour. More importantly, the new understanding that I have gained from this book has helped me to drop some of the shame that I have about my destrucitve and self-destructive behaviour, and it has provoked me into starting to challenge some of the toxic beliefs and strategies employed by my inner protector-persecutor. In other words, for me, The Inner World of Trama has been a truly thoughtful, powerful, moving and healing book. In fact, I consider myself to be pretty widely read, and The Inner World of Trauma is one of the two most important books that I have ever read. Lots of books have added bits to the puzzel of my(self) understanding

This is one of the most important books that I have ever read. Kalsched describes how the very strategies that we develop to help us survive childhood trauma can turn against us, becoming the psychological equivalent of an auto-immune disease. The inner protector, which emerged to get us through trama, turns into an inner persecutor (and the trauma can simply be a mis-fit between a child and the child's environment, rather than anything more obvious and dramatic). This book has revolutionised the way that I understand my world, my behaviour and the behaviour of those around me. It has enabled me to realise why I get stuck and why real change is so difficult (in contrast to all the quick-fix promises made by the self-help industry). This is not an easy book to read. It does not offer simple answers. Reading this book in an open and self-reflective way is accutely painful, because it hits deep truths about the self-destructive side of who we all are. And yet Kalsched's observations about what happens to us as a result of trauma does create the possibility of greater freedom. Kalsched explains why it can be so hard to change, and through his explaination he unlocks the door to real change. Kalsched's ideas on the protector turned persecutor create an understanding which enables healing to occur. This is a HUGE book. I cannot reccomend it too highly.

From the introduction: What dreams reveal and what recent clinical research has shown are that when trauma strikes the developing psyche of a child, a fragmentation of consciousness occurs in which the different "pieces" (Jung called them splinter-psyches or complexes) organize themselves according to certain archaic and typical (archetypal) patterns, most commonly dyads or syzygies made up of personified "beings." Typically, one part of the ego regresses to the infantile period, and another part progresses, i.e., grows up too fast and becomes precociously adapted to the outer world, often as a "false self." The progressed part of the personality then caretakes the regressed part. This dyadic structure has been independently discovered by clinicians of many different theoretical persuasions -- a fact that indirectly supports its archetypal basis.From the back cover: In The Inner World of Trauma Donald Kalsched explores the interior world of dream and fantasy images encountered in therapy with people who have suffered unbearable life experiences. He shows how, in an ironical twist of psychical life, the very defensive images designed to protect the self from further injury can become malevolent and destructive, resulting in further trauma for the person. Why and how this happens are among the questions this book sets out to answer. Drawing on detailed clinical material, the author gives special attention to the problems of addiction and psychosomatic disorder, as well as the broad topic of dissociation and its treatment.Donald Kalsched here brings together Jung's views on trauma and re-visions many classical interpretations of Jungian theory. By focusing on the archaic and primitive defenses of the core self and the mytho-poetic language of dream and fairy tale, he connects Jungian theory and practice with contemporary object relations theory and dissociation theory. At the same time, he shows how a Jungian understanding of the universal images of myth and folklore can illuminate treatments of the traumatized patient.Trauma is about the rupture of those transitional processes of human relatedness that make life worth living. Donald Kalsched sees this as a spiritual problem as well as a psychological one and in The Inner World of Trauma he provides a compelling insight into how an inner self-care system tries to save the personal spirit from annihilation.

Readers well grounded in Jungian concepts are most likely to find this book, in which Kalshed writes about the development of self-care systems with great insight and compassion, of value and interest. The book is readable, well written, and well organized. Part One contains clinical illustrations and the views of Jung, Freud and others on the development of self-care systems. The book is well grounded in the larger world of psychoanalytic theory. Part Two, which focuses on aspects of the daimonic in myth and fairy tales, further illustrates the perverse nature of the self-care system which both preserves and destroys. This is a book I have returned to many times.

I have read and re-read this excellent book. Kalsched makes a wonderful bridge between object relations and depth psychology, bringing to bear on the problem of trauma and its attendant archetypal defenses of the self the best of both approaches.This whole area is of great interest in clinical circles as we see so many patients with borderline, narcissitic, or schzoid characters. The understanding Kalsched offers, cast in Jungian terms, is invaluable.The essence of the problem is that due to trauma, and keeping in mind this is almost never a single dramatic event, but rather a series of smaller, more subtle failures over time, a split occurs in the psyche. And a defense system develops to protect that essential core from further injury.This archetypal defense system is primitive and ruthless in its efforts to guard against further assualt on the Self. It's rather like preferring the agony of the known to the terror of the unknown. Analysis with such patients is often long and difficult and the postive transference of today can rapidly dissolve into hatred and negative transference tomorrow. It requires patience from the analyst and capacity to contain the intense affects that arise.Kalsched artfully weaves case material, theory, and fairy-tales into a challenging, readable and valuable mix.This book is the best clinical Jungian book I have read in a long time.