The Complexity of Trauma: Jungian and Psychoanalytic Approaches to the Treatment of Trauma

This important volume offers a broad and in-depth overview of how to understand and treat trauma from both a Jungian and psychoanalytical perspective written by internationally recognized experts in the field of Jungian analysis. It was born out of a lecture series on trauma organized by Luisa Zoppi for the Italian Analytical Association (AIPA) in 2021.  She invited eminent Italian and international analysts to give lectures on different aspects of working with trauma to an audience of analysts and therapists in Rome.  A central theme of the lecture series was the application of Jung’s concept of the ‘complex’ and his understanding of splitting processes of the psyche to trauma.

The series also acknowledged the enormous contribution of Donald Kalsched to a Jungian understanding of working with trauma.  Indeed, he writes one of the book chapters. His work is the culmination of a fine tradition.  Kalsched was strongly influenced by Fordham and their clinical understanding was founded on wisdom gained from Freudian and Kleinian psychoanalytic theory.  Their clinical observations confirm that trauma releases rage and hatred which comes alive in the analytic relationship. Throughout the book, the impact of this aggression, and ways to work with it in the transference, are examined. Findings from classical psychoanalysis are integrated with those from analytical psychology to this end. Traversing a range of pertinent themes including archetypal defenses, primary narcissistic wounding, somatic symptoms, symbolic representation and processing, neuroscience and implicit memory, the book features a variety of voices from different theoretical perspectives.  A great strength of the book is that each contributor grounds their theoretical understanding by offering clinical examples and lessons from their experience of working with patients.

Chapters cover a wide range of clinical phenomena including early relational trauma, dissociative states, the Self-care system, unconscious communication, embodied countertransference, eroticization, PTSD, creativity, transgenerational trauma, archetypal, personal and cultural/social issues. Besides these, an understanding of the vicissitudes of a myth from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, through the lens of the neurophysiology of relational trauma, is also presented.

The Complexity of Trauma is key reading for psychoanalysts and therapists as well as for researchers, students and trainees in schools of psychodynamic psychotherapy and those interested in working with trauma.