The internal world of trauma, tested by a work group

Five authors, members of a reading group, studied D. Kalsched’s The Inner World of Trauma. Archetypal Defenses of the Personal Spirit and then summarized it in part or in whole, emphasizing certain crucial points. P. Hill points out the personification of the archetypal images, and studies the defenses of the self which are at work in what Kalsched calls a “self-care system”. L. Lacour examines the line of defenses of the self when they are re-actualized in the transference relationship, causing the patient to experience “retraumatization”. O. Cametz is especially interested in the emphasis Kalsched places on the concept of splitting-off represented by separate worlds: conscious and unconscious; masculine and feminine, etc., within which the analyst assumes the role go-between in an archetypal encounter marked by violence. Considering the book’s title, D. Guilbault points out the no-exit surroundings experienced by a person who has undergone trauma, and discusses the Kalsched’s concept of personal spirit, as well as the role of the transcendent function. B. Allain-Dupré focuses on the use of a fairytale by Grimm to illustrate the self’s defense strategies, to show how protection and armor prevent any care-taking intrusion. Only by consciously re-experiencing a retraumatization in the transference relationship, in which both patient and analyst are equally disillusioned, can the personal and the archetypal be motivated in a transitional process working towards the consolidation of the ego.