Overview
This book delves into the infant’s natural multiplicity as the foundation of the adult, to rediscover the impact of first year, unremembered trauma. Advancing interdisciplinary inquiry into psychology’s neurobiology, infant research, developmental research, Jungian analytical psychology, and psychoanalysis, Kelly Polanski unveils adult unconscious dissociation at the heart of trauma’s wound. She re-engages nascent part-self-state experience to unlock early psyche-somatic Selving under adverse conditions and to emancipate the spark of vitality trapped inside the gap of trauma, patiently awaiting recovery and renewal—to live. A clinical case of crib trauma vividly demonstrates how Jungian dream analysis uncovers pivotal distinctions in life’s first unconscious psychifying processes to reveal trauma’s chthonic impact and restoration. Changeling mythology illuminates the pathway of this shocking initiation into the dual destiny of the empirical and archetypal child and their epic transformational fate into whole Self experience. This unique contribution offers adult survivors of infant trauma rediscovery and renewal to live again their precious instinctual spirit of aliveness, and will be of interest to Jungian analysts, as well as psychoanalysts, psychotherapists, body-oriented somatic therapists, social workers, and individuals suffering from trauma.
Full Product Details
Author: Kelly Polanski
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd
Imprint: Routledge
ISBN: 9781041107279
ISBN 10: 1041107277
Pages: 248
Publication Date: 14 May 2026
Audience:
College/higher education
,
Professional and scholarly
,
Tertiary & Higher Education
,
Professional & Vocational
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Forthcoming
Availability: Not yet available
This item is yet to be released. You can pre-order this item and we will dispatch it to you upon its release.
Reviews
'In this outstanding tome, Kelly Polanski has amassed and packed an impressive amount of knowledge, information, and experience in support of Selving, her term for the process involved in reassembling a psyche that was split at a very early age. Therapists from all backgrounds working with traumatized patients, will profit from the breadth and depth in this monumental work and major advance that will prove to be a milestone in the treatment of patients with bifurcated souls.' Art Funkhouser, retired instructor of dreamwork, C. G. Jung Institute, Küsnacht, Switzerland 'This insightful book explores unremembered early trauma arising during the process of Selving—in the first year of life—and its enduring impact on adult individuation. Drawing together Jungian developmental concepts, archetypal and dream symbolism, changeling mythology, and contemporary findings in neuroscience, the author offers a poetic inquiry that is at once grounded and convincing, as well as beautiful and compelling.' Lara Lagutina, Dr. Clin. Psych., Training Jungian Analyst, The Society of Analytical Psychology, London 'Polanski masterfully synthesizes pertinent research on trauma and the formative infant psyche with Carl Jung’s quintessential work on the unconscious. Her work with adults who suffered early, pre-cognitive trauma restores the Spiritus Vitae of their forgotten inner child. This compelling read is for anyone who desires a deeper understanding of what it means to become an integrated whole self.' Susann Gipson McDonald, Diploma Candidate, C. G. Jung Institute, Küsnacht, Switzerland
Author Information
Kelly Polanski is a Jungian Analyst in private practice and an Accredited Analyst of the C.G. Jung Institute in Zurich. Based in Edmonton, Canada, she lectures and teaches widely on the transformation of infant trauma in adults.
