Donald Kalsched

Donald Kalsched is a Jungian analyst whose work centers on the archetypal dimensions of early trauma. The Inner World of Trauma (1996) and Trauma and the Soul (2013) argue that severe early wounding produces an archaic self-care system — a defensive daimonic figure that walls off the soul from further injury while also preventing its development — and that depth work with trauma must enter into negotiation with this figure rather than dismantle it.

Kalsched’s contribution to the tradition is the integration of object-relations clinical observation with the archetypal imagination: the persecutory inner figure is read simultaneously as developmental defense and as classical daimon. See kalsched-inner-world-of-trauma for the foundational treatment.

Relationships

• kalsched-inner-world-of-trauma
• carl-jung
• daimon