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In this book Donald Kalsched proposes that trauma evokes defences which arise, not from the ego, but from the trauma victim's archetypal pool. This defence system he calls the archetypal self care system. These defences of the Self formulate a system which Kalsched posits to be characterized by the same mythopoeic structure and functions as all other archetypal constellations, namely numinosity, daimonic personification and bi-polar intentionality. Thus, a daimon may be persecutory and/or protective, but whether negative or positive, wizard or witch, monster or angel, any such Mercurial figure (p. 69) functions to assure survival through a dissociation so seductive, and so thorough, that all relations with the external world are eliminated. For Kalsched, violation of the personal spirit or the imperishable essence of selfhood is so unthinkable that archetypal defences will go to any length to protect the Self - even to the point of killing the host personality in which this personal spirit is housed. In this view of trauma and a self care system, Kalsched seeks to redress what he views as inadequate in Jung's original idea of the Self as a central, regulating principle of the unconscious psyche.
Support for this hypothesis is drawn from analysts who similarly have noted the intractability of a trauma patient's resistance, notably from Freud for whom ‘daimonic’ forces resistant to analysis were attributed to the death instinct; from Fairbairn's internal saboteur; from Guntrip's anti-libidinal ego; from Melanie Klein's bad, persecutory breast; from Jung's negative animus; from Winnicott's primitive defences, and from other (unreferenced) current clinicians who espouse an internalized perpetrator. Chapters following the Introduction elaborate and support the author's hypothesis. They include Kalsched's own clinical experiences, discussions drawn from Jung's writings, and discussions of four fairy tales, the last forming Part II of the book.
Kalsched distinguishes himself