Donald Kalsched > Quotes

“Early relational trauma results from the fact that we are often given more to experience in this life than we can bear to experience consciously. This problem has been around since the beginning of time, but it is especially acute in early childhood where, because of the immaturity of the psyche and/or brain, we are ill-equipped to metabolize our experience. An infant or young child who is abused, violated or seriously neglected by a caretaking adult is overwhelmed by intolerable affects that are impossible for it to metabolize, much less understand or even think about.”
― Donald Kalsched, Trauma and the Soul: A Psycho-Spiritual Approach to Human Development and Its Interruption

“inner sanctuary to which the beleaguered ego repairs in time of crisis is also a world that opens onto transpersonal energies.”
― Donald Kalsched, The Inner World of Trauma: Archetypal Defences of the Personal Spirit