Donald E Kalsched
Biographic Data
| ID | 5445404 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Donald E Kalsched |
| GIVEN NAMES | Donald E |
| FAMILY NAME | Kalsched |
| SIGNATURE | KALSCHED D E |
| AFFILIATIONS | Santa Fe New Mexico |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 12 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 29 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 12 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1998 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
On Terrible Loss, Grief, and Sorrow in Times of War
This essay serves as an introduction to a special issue featuring work by and about Ukrainian Jungian analysts conducting therapy under the conditions of Russia’s war against Ukraine. Their work with loss, grief, crises, and other life changes are highlighted. These articles underscore important aspects of analytic efforts that can be applied in such circumstances, as well as noting the limits of therapeutic work when both patients and analysts f…
Intersections of personal vs. collective trauma during the Covid‐19 pandemic
This paper explores how the deadly shadow of COVID-19 passing over the Earth constitutes a collective trauma that frequently opens up or 'triggers' un-remembered personal trauma, and it provides clinical examples of these intersections. The paper further explores how the human imagination, which we normally utilize to make meaning out of traumatic experience, can be hijacked by fear - leading to avoidance of suffering and to illusory formulations…
Opening the closed heart
This paper begins with the understanding that early trauma leads to powerful dissociative defenses which injure the capacity to feel. It further explores ways to restore this capacity through body-centred attention to affect-in-the-moment in the psychoanalytic situation. Using the author's personal experience while in analysis as well as a case of severe early trauma, he demonstrates the consciousness-killing effect of primitive defenses and show…
Trauma, innocence and the core complex of dissociation
Trauma survivors often lament that they have lost their innocence or lost their souls and that something vulnerable and whole about themselves has been ‘broken’ or annihilated. Yet when the psychotherapeutic relationship begins, and symbolic material from dreams and the transference emerges, discernible patterns become apparent, indicating that a core of innocence and vitality has not been totally lost or annihilated. On the contrary, it has been…
Revisioning Fordham's ‘Defences of the self’ in light of modern relational theory and contemporary neuroscience
This paper explores the evolution of Michael Fordham's ideas concerning 'defences of the self', including his application of this concept to a group of 'difficult' adult patients in his famous 1974 paper by the same name. After tracing the relevance of Fordham's ideas to my own discovery of a 'self-care system' in the psychological material of early trauma patients (Kalsched ), I describe how Fordham's seminal notions might be revisioned in light…
Response to James Astor
Daimonic elements in early trauma
This paper explores some of the 'daimonic' elements of unconscious mentation that emerge both in dreams and in the transference/countertransference field with early-trauma patients and illustrates these with an extended clinical example. An archaic and typical (archetypal) 'trauma complex' is articulated (with diagram) as a bi-polar structure consisting of divine child protected and/or persecuted by an inner 'guardian angel'. Sources of this stru…
Trauma and daimonic reality in Ferenczi's later work
Jung and Ferenczi made independent discoveries of an 'archaic' (Jung) or 'primordial' (Ferenczi) layer of the psyche that shone through the 'basic fault' in the psyche opened by childhood trauma. This paper explores those parallels through an extended vignette of Ferenczi's work with Elizabeth Severn, known as 'R. N.' in the Clinical Diary. A remarkable inner object known as 'Orpha' appeared in the patient's trauma experience and saved a seed of …
Response to Gustav Bovensiepen
Response to ‘The multiple self
Archetypal defenses in the clinical situation
Critical moments along the path of an analysis are presented in order to illustrate how dreams portray archaic and typical (archetypal) defenses against the re‐experience of unbearable affect as it emerges. Inner defensive ‘objects’ functioning as a ‘self‐care system’ threaten to uproot, kill or destroy the connections between the dream ego and various images of vulnerability as these emerge in response to healing life events or transference feel…
Reply to Reid Anderson
Trauma, innocence and the core complex of dissociation
Trauma survivors often lament that they have lost their innocence or lost their souls and that something vulnerable and whole about themselves has been ‘broken’ or annihilated. Yet when the psychotherapeutic relationship begins, and symbolic material from dreams and the transference emerges, discernible patterns become apparent, indicating that a core of innocence and vitality has not been totally lost or annihilated. On the contrary, it has been…
Daimonic elements in early trauma
This paper explores some of the 'daimonic' elements of unconscious mentation that emerge both in dreams and in the transference/countertransference field with early-trauma patients and illustrates these with an extended clinical example. An archaic and typical (archetypal) 'trauma complex' is articulated (with diagram) as a bi-polar structure consisting of divine child protected and/or persecuted by an inner 'guardian angel'. Sources of this stru…
Archetypal defenses in the clinical situation
Critical moments along the path of an analysis are presented in order to illustrate how dreams portray archaic and typical (archetypal) defenses against the re‐experience of unbearable affect as it emerges. Inner defensive ‘objects’ functioning as a ‘self‐care system’ threaten to uproot, kill or destroy the connections between the dream ego and various images of vulnerability as these emerge in response to healing life events or transference feel…
Opening the closed heart
This paper begins with the understanding that early trauma leads to powerful dissociative defenses which injure the capacity to feel. It further explores ways to restore this capacity through body-centred attention to affect-in-the-moment in the psychoanalytic situation. Using the author's personal experience while in analysis as well as a case of severe early trauma, he demonstrates the consciousness-killing effect of primitive defenses and show…
Revisioning Fordham's ‘Defences of the self’ in light of modern relational theory and contemporary neuroscience
This paper explores the evolution of Michael Fordham's ideas concerning 'defences of the self', including his application of this concept to a group of 'difficult' adult patients in his famous 1974 paper by the same name. After tracing the relevance of Fordham's ideas to my own discovery of a 'self-care system' in the psychological material of early trauma patients (Kalsched ), I describe how Fordham's seminal notions might be revisioned in light…
Intersections of personal vs. collective trauma during the Covid‐19 pandemic
This paper explores how the deadly shadow of COVID-19 passing over the Earth constitutes a collective trauma that frequently opens up or 'triggers' un-remembered personal trauma, and it provides clinical examples of these intersections. The paper further explores how the human imagination, which we normally utilize to make meaning out of traumatic experience, can be hijacked by fear - leading to avoidance of suffering and to illusory formulations…
Trauma and daimonic reality in Ferenczi's later work
Jung and Ferenczi made independent discoveries of an 'archaic' (Jung) or 'primordial' (Ferenczi) layer of the psyche that shone through the 'basic fault' in the psyche opened by childhood trauma. This paper explores those parallels through an extended vignette of Ferenczi's work with Elizabeth Severn, known as 'R. N.' in the Clinical Diary. A remarkable inner object known as 'Orpha' appeared in the patient's trauma experience and saved a seed of …
Response to James Astor
Response to Gustav Bovensiepen
Response to ‘The multiple self
Archetypal defenses in the clinical situation
Critical moments along the path of an analysis are presented in order to illustrate how dreams portray archaic and typical (archetypal) defenses against the re‐experience of unbearable affect as it emerges. Inner defensive ‘objects’ functioning as a ‘self‐care system’ threaten to uproot, kill or destroy the connections between the dream ego and various images of vulnerability as these emerge in response to healing life events or transference feel…
Reply to Reid Anderson
Response to ‘The multiple self
Response to Gustav Bovensiepen
Response to James Astor
Daimonic elements in early trauma
This paper explores some of the 'daimonic' elements of unconscious mentation that emerge both in dreams and in the transference/countertransference field with early-trauma patients and illustrates these with an extended clinical example. An archaic and typical (archetypal) 'trauma complex' is articulated (with diagram) as a bi-polar structure consisting of divine child protected and/or persecuted by an inner 'guardian angel'. Sources of this stru…
Trauma and daimonic reality in Ferenczi's later work
Jung and Ferenczi made independent discoveries of an 'archaic' (Jung) or 'primordial' (Ferenczi) layer of the psyche that shone through the 'basic fault' in the psyche opened by childhood trauma. This paper explores those parallels through an extended vignette of Ferenczi's work with Elizabeth Severn, known as 'R. N.' in the Clinical Diary. A remarkable inner object known as 'Orpha' appeared in the patient's trauma experience and saved a seed of …
Revisioning Fordham's ‘Defences of the self’ in light of modern relational theory and contemporary neuroscience
This paper explores the evolution of Michael Fordham's ideas concerning 'defences of the self', including his application of this concept to a group of 'difficult' adult patients in his famous 1974 paper by the same name. After tracing the relevance of Fordham's ideas to my own discovery of a 'self-care system' in the psychological material of early trauma patients (Kalsched ), I describe how Fordham's seminal notions might be revisioned in light…
Trauma, innocence and the core complex of dissociation
Trauma survivors often lament that they have lost their innocence or lost their souls and that something vulnerable and whole about themselves has been ‘broken’ or annihilated. Yet when the psychotherapeutic relationship begins, and symbolic material from dreams and the transference emerges, discernible patterns become apparent, indicating that a core of innocence and vitality has not been totally lost or annihilated. On the contrary, it has been…
Opening the closed heart
This paper begins with the understanding that early trauma leads to powerful dissociative defenses which injure the capacity to feel. It further explores ways to restore this capacity through body-centred attention to affect-in-the-moment in the psychoanalytic situation. Using the author's personal experience while in analysis as well as a case of severe early trauma, he demonstrates the consciousness-killing effect of primitive defenses and show…
Intersections of personal vs. collective trauma during the Covid‐19 pandemic
This paper explores how the deadly shadow of COVID-19 passing over the Earth constitutes a collective trauma that frequently opens up or 'triggers' un-remembered personal trauma, and it provides clinical examples of these intersections. The paper further explores how the human imagination, which we normally utilize to make meaning out of traumatic experience, can be hijacked by fear - leading to avoidance of suffering and to illusory formulations…
On Terrible Loss, Grief, and Sorrow in Times of War
This essay serves as an introduction to a special issue featuring work by and about Ukrainian Jungian analysts conducting therapy under the conditions of Russia’s war against Ukraine. Their work with loss, grief, crises, and other life changes are highlighted. These articles underscore important aspects of analytic efforts that can be applied in such circumstances, as well as noting the limits of therapeutic work when both patients and analysts f…
Psychology (11 works) · Psychoanalysis (9 works) · Psychotherapy Techniques and Applications (9 works) · Philosophy (7 works) · Philosophy (6 works) · Psychotherapist (5 works) · Social Psychology (5 works) · Citation (4 works) · Computer Science (4 works) · Jungian Analytical Psychology (4 works)