Trauma and the Soul

In "Trauma and the Soul," Donald Kalsched continues the exploration he began in his first book, "The Inner World of Trauma" (1996), this time delving deeper into the mystical or spiritual moments that often occur during the intimacies of psychoanalytic work. Through extended clinical vignettes, including therapeutic dialogue and dreams, he demonstrates how depth psychotherapy with trauma 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 merely 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 further.