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 images which are generated to defend the self can become malevolent and destructive, resulting in further trauma for the person. Why and how this happens are the questions the 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...

In 'Trauma and the Soul', Donald Kalsched continues the exploration he began in his first book 'The Inner World of Trauma', this time going further into the mystical or spiritual moments that often come to the fore in psychoanalytic work. Through extended clinical vignettes, including therapeutic dialogue and dreams, he shows how the inter-subjective relational field can open both analytic partners to 'another world' of non-ordinary reality in which daimonic powers reside, both light and dark.