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2 Reddit comments about Trauma and the Soul:

u/Marshreddit · 7 pointsr/Jung

"Trauma and the Soul" (2013) by Donald Kalsched who apparently has written previous books on the topic. Link at bottom. Basically, Dr. Kalsched is a Jungian theorist who is a psychologist by practice and integrates those experiences into the book. This book, operates under the premise Jung discovered, albeit the same one which split Freud and Jung originally. The premise is this: We live in an inner and outer world, two simultaneous worlds, and when trauma occurs (mostly associated with a young age in extreme cases) the soul is pushed away to the inner world and neglected by the person for proper indwelling. However, everyone has that innocent core of their Self, but not everyone acknowledges it.

I didn't sleep last night, but here are some excerpts I used for an essay a few months ago that may clear up what this book is about. He traces the various forms of disassociation (In Dante's Inferno) and uses that as an example of negative soul indwelling/Ego defenses. As much as Jung believed in the unconscious and collective u; we cannot deny our own ego's defenses at hiding, masking or creating a false sense of trauma/suffering.

“We are left with an important question: Are we material beings with occasional intimations of another world of spiritual reality, lying just the other side of the veil? Or are we spiritual beings, suffering through a material existence? The question poses a false dichotomy. Clearly we are both. And that is why we attempt to live in that potential space where the true story resides--between the worlds with one eye open, looking out, and one eye closed, looking in [binocular vision]” (Kalsched 45).

“One reason that our binocular vision is important is that it unites the two worlds of inner and outer reality in a living third thing” (Kalsched, 9).
^^^
Mentions inuits in the Introduction and a piece of art with one eye closed and one eye open. Basically, we live in both, but not all of us choose to accept this, and in part, they are denying part of themselves (paraphrasing, I think he would say deny the soul a chance to indwell in the body).

This next quote is about that 'potential living space', the brackets in these quotes I added for clarification for the essay I wrote.


The ‘reality in a living third thing’, the potential space, is mediated by both worlds of inner and outer, this is that “potential space within which ensouled living becomes possible, the space where the vital spark of one’s deepest, most essential God-given true self gets an echo from people and things in the outer world, and where the [innocent] soul is slowly ‘schooled’ by suffering as Keats would say, taking on its own individuality. This process potentiates the “two worlds” that we have been trying to keep in view in these pages--inner/outer, human/divine, temporal/eternal, ego/Self--the two worlds whose dialectic defines the human condition and whose simultaneous presence promotes that coming-into-being that defines healthy living.” (Kalsched, 50).

Same book, but now a quote from Carl Jung, who again was the basis of this book.

One year later in 1959 Carl Jung, whose psychoanalytic groundwork is the basis of “Trauma And the Soul” was defending a quote of his asking how he would define “religious outlook” in a statement he made in a Chicago newspaper previously.
“When you study the mental history of the world, you see that people since times immemorial had a general teaching or doctrine about the wholeness of the world. Originally and down to our days, they were considered to be holy traditions taught to the young people as a preparation for their future life. This has been the case in primitive tribes as well as in highly differentiated civilizations. The teaching had always a “philosophical” and “ethical” aspect.” In our civilization this spiritual background has gone astray...thus one of the most important instinctual activities of our mind has lost its object. As these views deal with the world as a whole, they create also a wholeness of the individual…for instance a primitive tribe loses its vitality, when it is deprived of its specific religious outlook. People are no more rooted in their world and lose their orientation. They just drift. The need for a meaning of their lives remains unanswered, because the rational, biological goals are unable to express the irrational wholeness of human life. Thus life loses its meaning”(170).

Last paragraph, I'll bold Kascheld's quote of Jung from my essay lols.
The void and seemingly purposeless lives are a response to a lack of spirit or acknowledgement of the ‘two worlds’ we live in simultaneously which “Jung believed the instinct for wholeness and unity is, ‘the most important of the fundamental instincts’” (170). Life has meaning but it takes education not merely from ‘this world’ or ‘the other’, but ‘both worlds’ simultaneously via communication processes which are justified if and only if they help others actualize their potential instead of consciously manipulating them.

tl;dr A very comprehensive look at Psycho-spiritual therapy under Carl Jung dualist's worldview by a psychologist named Donald Kalsched who has written other books on the topic, this one is (2013). The dualist world view is listed above, but basically, we have an inner/outer world, both simultaenously, and with trauma of childhood, the soul in extreme cases (chapters 2) protects the soul and innocence until later indwelling. The cases are from his work, which spans across years with patients. An excellent chapter 3 about "Dis" in Dante's Inferno and a lesson about false hope and true suffering, aka Dante's Inferno line, "Abandon all ye hope, who enter" because its a false sense of hope in which its "God" turns suffering into violence, (wrath, greed, lust, sloth etc.) instead of a God which turns violence into suffering. I don't think Kalsched put the (seven deadly sin emphasis specifically), but its within that realm.

Now, I checked out the book, but lord, its so packed and wonderfully written that I could suggest buying it--because its a book for a lifetime. I feel like after it, I have a much better sense of Jung, Dante's Inferno (Which I started reading just before this book, still am reading in Purgatorio/Inferno again), and a much better sense of myself and trauma because he covers his basis.


tl;dr tl;drr
We are all striving for wholeness, as Jung believed we do throughout life; if you want a major revitalization in how you approach the world, please read this, and also consider reading Dante's Inferno before or during this book as well.

http://www.amazon.com/Trauma-Soul-psycho-spiritual-development-interruption/dp/0415681464/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1394630449&sr=8-1&keywords=trauma+and+the+soul

u/slabbb- · 5 pointsr/ChildrenOfTheLight

Yeah, likewise. Great show!
Best thing I've watched personally since 'Stranger Things', in terms of series, though I found I emotionally connected more to The OA.

Really encouraging to see there is programming being made that concern such topics, and that they (hopefully in this case) make it beyond one season.

I find it interesting also the observed overlap, convergence, between traumatic events, a kind of rupture occurring to the psyche-body relationship of the individual concerned and the 'entrance' into altered states that usher in intimations and 'conversations' with the subtle, with the spiritual, experientially (belief and faith shift into conscious knowledge). That the rupture of 'normality' through some kind of traumatic event or process seems integrally related to the becoming conscious of the subtle/spiritual in this sense.

There's illuminating discussion and elaboration on this connection in some books I'm reading presently called Trauma and the Soul and Who is the Dreamer? Who Dreams the Dream?