Opening the closed heart

Affect‐focused clinical work with the victims of early trauma

Bibliographic Data

ID8982194
AuthorsDonald E Kalsched (Santa Fe New Mexico, corresponding author)
Year2020
Volume65
Issue1
Pages136-152
Publication date2020-01-23
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Analytical Psychology (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0021-8774 • E-ISSN: 1465-5922
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/1468-5922.12562
PMID31972890
OpenAlexW3003151773
LanguageEN
Citations received4
References cited6

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 shows how body-sensitive techniques hold the promise of restoring the patient's sense of aliveness and hence, opening the unconscious to those affect-images that are the building blocks of the human imagination. A final section focuses on the neglect of feeling in Jungian psychology and suggests that the "creation of consciousness" which Jung described as his personal myth, is quintessentially a process of emotional transformation - of bringing unconscious suffering into consciousness - as feelings

Affect (linguistics · Art · Consciousness · Feeling · Literature · Mythology · Psychoanalysis · Psychoanalytic theory · Psychotherapist · Unconscious mind · Communication · Counseling, Therapy, and Family Dynamics · Neuroscience · Philosophy, Ethics, and Existentialism · Psychology · Psychotherapy Techniques and Applications · Social Psychology

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