Donald Kalsched – Jungian analyst

Those who have either worked as therapists and/or been patients will know how hard it is to say what actually happens in long-term analytic work. It’s hard to pin down when change actually happens, and, exactly how those long established and embodied ways of thinking and being are gradually refigured. And yet we do change, and how we are in the world changes too, and it’s primarily done through relationship. What happens between the person being seen and the person in the role of therapist; the dynamics between these two people has the power to bring change. If the relationship works well then what has been imprisoning is brought into consciousness – one could say brought into the light, and re-experienced in a way that allows insight.

The Jungian analyst Donald Kalsched (DK), who works with early trauma in adult patients, describes his work with a man called Mike who grew up in a repressive religious family with a tyrannical ex-army father who would hit him, and a more emotionally responsive mother but who would lock him in cupboards as a punishment; Mike experienced much physical and emotional abuse as a child. As a young adult his rage became channelled into superhuman feats in sport, and his self-esteem gained from sexual acts with women, but without any capacity to surrender and be open as part of a creative relationship.

In the therapy, the relationship between Mike and DK was largely positive for both. Mike brought dreams, and was grateful for the space to talk, and DK began to genuinely like him – though Mike initially had to walk round the room during sessions: ‘pawing like a wild stallion when he got worked up’. It took a couple of months before he could sit down, and then through his dreams the pain from the past began to emerge. DK thought that because he was a male therapist and Mike was gradually able to trust him, it was easier for Mike to share his inner sense of inferiority and shame and how needy he was. Mike also brought to the sessions his vulnerability in now being in a settled relationship with his female partner and the father to a small boy.

Mike’s dreams repeatedly revolved around the theme of a lost boy:

‘I walk into a dark room. Above in the attic I can hear a young person’s voice yell out “help me!” There seems no way to get into the attic. I can hear his or her body pulled along the floor. This person is defeated, desperate, alone, isolated.’

Other dreams were full of violence and cruelty. Responding with feelings of sadness and anger, Mike was also overwhelmed with shame, and imagined that DK was feeling disgust. It took a long time for Mike to begin to allow the deep feelings of grief and loss to emerge. But eventually they did: ‘Having the courage now to feel the helplessness of his losses, he also felt his love deepen.’ He began to see how seeking to master pain through, for example, extreme sports and wild behaviour had been: ‘a kind of inflated macho ritual in order to prevent himself from feeling the psychic pain associated with his unbearable trauma.’

In the middle phase of the therapy Mike worked at the experience of trying to control his aggression by confronting what he and DK called ‘the anger demon’. This included being furious with DK around a summer break when Mike felt abandoned: an experience that they both felt made the relationship between them more real as they survived ‘the rupture.’