A Closer Look at Kalsched's Self-Care System After Trauma
Altman, Avrom
Pacifica Graduate Institute
2019
65
M.A.
Pacifica Graduate Institute
2019
In Trauma and the Soul: A Psycho-spiritual Approach to Human Development and Its Interruption, Donald Kalsched demonstrated how dreams illuminate the archetypal defenses of the unconscious in the lives of trauma survivors. Kalsched focused heavily on dissociation, demonstrating that although the defense serves a protective function, it also comes at a high cost, robbing a person of vitality and wellbeing. As a survivor of trauma from childhood and the Iraq War, I draw on my dreams and discoveries in analysis in using heuristic and alchemical hermeneutic methods of inquiry to argue that a broader view of the self-care system is necessary. All psychological defenses can have soul-robbing and vitality-starving effects, and the type of defense is less important than the intensity of its application and how it distorts the personality.