Trauma
aND Dreams
“ Trauma is about pain so utter that it swallows up normal developmental processes, leaving an abyss or “basic fault” (Balint, 1979) between self and world outwardly and ego and self inwardly (Edinger, 1972 ). Fortunately the story does not end with this cleavage because the human psyche has enormous self-curative powers. It covers the abyss with trance so that life can go on.” (Kalsched in Stein (1)).
Donald Kalsched’s description of the therapeutic process in healing trauma provides an understanding and experience of the resources that the archetypal matrix gifts to the individual as client and the therapeutic process.
“The psyche seems to have access to higher precognitive or trans-rational powers” (1)
As a survivor of trauma (any form of trauma), a safe space and relationship becomes a transformative experience where both the verbal expression of the experience and the non-verbal unconscious experiences are able to be explored. Dreams have an important function in the healing of trauma in accessing the hidden resources of the psyche.
Trauma can cause overwhelming emotions and ideas. These may be so disturbing to the person that they repress and dissociate the traumatic emotions and images. This has the function of protecting us from the overwhelming emotions and traumatic experience. But it also has the effect of disconnecting us from the rich and creative source of the dream, or rather the dreaming process.
The dream provides the link between the unconscious and consciousness. The dream can have a healing function to heal the broken psychic skin. Our dreams are a form of storytelling in symbolic form. We need to hold the tension of the dream material to look within and without- to look at our internal world and look at how we bring the world around ourselves into ourselves.
Jungian analysis is a therapeutic process that is able to assist the individual in accessing and working with the deep resources of the psyche through dream work, and to access resources that lead to a healing and re-integration of split-off parts in the quest for wholeness.
Written by Konrad van Staden Clinical Psychologist and Jungian Analyst
(1) Kalsched, D in Stein, M : Jungian Psychoanalysis: Working in the Spirit of Carl Jung, Open Court, 2010.