Fees:

• $75: Early Registration (see link at bottom of page)
• $90: After October 25th
• $50: Students & Interns with ID
• $35: JPA members

Patients who have suffered severe early trauma often find themselves in the grip of “daimonic” negative voices from the unconscious (complexes). These voices conspire to keep patients in undifferentiated states of perpetual “fantasying” (Winnicott) and out of object-relating or creative imagining.

Such cases illustrate a pathology of the symbolic function which Jung did not discuss. This has become the subject of extensive investigation by object-relations theorists (Ogden, Mitrani, Bick, Tustin, etc.).

We will explore this problem with the aid of both Jungian and non-Jungian theory. Closer examination of these cases reveals that the “daimonic” inner objects are both archaic and archetypal. They personify primitive defenses whose “goal” seems to be the dismemberment of experience in order to prevent unbearable anxieties from devastating the “imperishable personal spirit” of the individual. These defenses therefore represent an “anti-individuation” urge or “anti-evolutionary force” in the psyches of early trauma’s victims. This “force” causes negative therapeutic reactions in psychotherapy with these individuals.

Treatment of these “difficult cases” will be explored and typical impasses discussed. Special attention will be paid to those dreams which occur at moments in psychotherapy when early trauma is being “remembered” in the transference.

This seminar addresses the following questions:

• How does early attachment theory illuminate the area of early childhood trauma?
• How is early trauma (prior to language) encoded in the psychosomatic system and how does such trauma “surface” in the clinical situation?
• What are the unique transfer-ence/countertransference con-figurations that emerge when the patient has a history of severe early trauma, and how does a knowledge of these aid in the treatment?
• When the patient has been the victim of repeated pre-verbal trauma, what inner “objects” and “imagos” seem to characterize the unconscious material (dreams, fantasy, enactments) and what is the connection between these archaic images and C. G. Jung’s “archetypal images”?

Donald E. Kalsched, Ph.D., is a clinical psychologist and Jungian analyst with a private practice in Katonah, N.Y. He is a faculty member and supervisor at the C.G. Jung Institute in New York City and with the Inter-Regional Society of Jungian Analysts. He is also Dean of Jungian Studies at the Westchester Institute for Training in Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy in Mt. Kisco, N.Y. His recent book, The Inner World of Trauma: Archetypal Defenses of the Personal Spirit, was published in 1996 (Routledge).

Directions to St. Mark’s Cathedral on Capital Hill:
(Parking available adjacent to Bloedel Hall)

From I-5 heading North, exit at Lakeview Blvd. Turn left at the stop sign. Staying right, bear right up the hill; turn right on Boston; turn right on Harvard; turn right onto 10th Avenue. St. Mark's is about 4 blocks (on the right).

From I-5 heading South, exit at Roanoke; turn left over the freeway; turn right onto 10th Avenue; St. Mark's is about 8 blocks (on the right).

From SR 520 heading West, exit at Roanoke; turn right onto Roanoke; turn right onto 10th Avenue; St. Mark's is about 8 blocks (on the right).

Noontime Refreshments Provided

To register, please print and fill out the form available at this link.