This accessible work is the first in more than seventy-five years to discuss the many roles of adrenaline in regulating the "inner world" of the body. David S. Goldstein, an international authority and award-winning teacher, introduces new concepts concerning the nature of stress and distress across the body's regulatory systems. Discussing how the body's stress systems are coordinated, and how stress, by means of adrenaline, may affect the development, manifestations, and outcomes of chronic diseases, Goldstein challenges researchers and clinicians to use scientific integrative medicine to develop new ways to treat, prevent, and palliate disease. Goldstein explains why a former attorney general with Parkinson disease has a tendency to faint, why young astronauts in excellent physical shape cannot stand up when reexposed to Earth's gravity, why professional football players can collapse and die of heat shock during summer training camp, and why baseball players spit so much. Adrenaline and the Inner World is designed to supplement academic coursework in psychology, psychiatry, endocrinology, cardiology, complementary and alternative medicine, physiology, and biochemistry. It includes an extensive glossary.

Studies the case of an American living in Finland who experienced altered states of consciousness, including automatic painting and poetry writing, and suggest a practical route to enlightenment.

Donald Kalsched explores the interior world of dream and fantasy images encountered in therapy with people who have suffered unbearable life experiences. He shows how, in an ironical twist of psychical life, the very images which are generated to defend the self can become malevolent and destructive, resulting in further trauma for the person. Why and how this happens are the questions the book sets out to answer. Drawing on detailed clinical material, the author gives special attention to the problems of addiction and psychosomatic disorder, as well as the broad topic of dissociation and its treatment. By focusing on the archaic and primitive defenses of the self he connects Jungian theory and practice with contemporary object relations theory and dissociation theory. At the same time, he shows how a Jungian understanding of the universal images of myth and folklore can illuminate treatment of the traumatised patient. Trauma is about the rupture of those developmental transitions that make life worth living. Donald Kalsched sees this as a spiritual problem as well as a psychological one and in The Inner World of Trauma he provides a compelling insight into how an inner self-care system tries to save the personal spirit.