Trauma and Human Existence

Author: Robert D. Stolorow
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1136873120
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 75

Book Description
Trauma and Human Existence effectively interweaves two themes central to emotional trauma - the first pertains to the contextuality of emotional life in general, and of the experience of emotional trauma in particular, and the second pertains to the recognition that the possibility of emotional trauma is built into the basic constitution of human existence. This volume traces how both themes interconnect, largely as they crystallize in the author’s personal experience of traumatic loss. As discussed in the book's final chapter, whether or not this constitutive possibility will be brought lastingly into the foreground of our experiential world depends on the relational contexts in which we live. Taken as a whole, Trauma and Human Existence exhibits the unity of the deeply personal, the theoretical, and the philosophical in the understanding of emotional trauma and the place it occupies in human existence.

World, Affectivity, Trauma

Author: Robert D. Stolorow
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136717714
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 103

Book Description
Stolorow and his collaborators' post-Cartesian psychoanalytic perspective – intersubjective-systems theory – is a phenomenological contextualism that illuminates worlds of emotional experience as they take form within relational contexts. After outlining the evolution and basic ideas of this framework, Stolorow shows both how post-Cartesian psychoanalysis finds enrichment and philosophical support in Heidegger's analysis of human existence, and how Heidegger's existential philosophy, in turn, can be enriched and expanded by an encounter with post-Cartesian psychoanalysis. In doing so, he creates an important psychological bridge between post-Cartesian psychoanalysis and existential philosophy in the phenomenology of emotional trauma.

The Trauma of Everyday Life

Author: Dr. Epstein
Publisher: Hay House, Inc
ISBN: 1781804567
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 266

Book Description
Trauma does not just happen to a few unlucky people; it is the bedrock of our psychology. Death and illness touch us all, but even the everyday sufferings of loneliness and fear are traumatic. In The Trauma of Everyday Life renowned psychiatrist and author of Thoughts Without a Thinker Mark Epstein uncovers the transformational potential of trauma, revealing how it can be used for the mind's own development. Epstein finds throughout that trauma, if it doesn't destroy us, wakes us up to both our minds' own capacity and to the suffering of others. It makes us more human, caring and wise. It can be our greatest teacher, our freedom itself, and it is available to all of us. Western psychology teaches that if we understand the cause of trauma, we might move past it while many drawn to Eastern practices see meditation as a means of rising above, or distancing themselves from, their most difficult emotions. Both, Epstein argues, fail to recognize that trauma is an indivisible part of life and can be used as a tool for growth and an ever deeper understanding of change. When we regard trauma with this perspective, understanding that suffering is universal and without logic, our pain connects us to the world on a more fundamental level. Guided by the Buddha's life as a profound example of the power of trauma, Epstein's also closely examines his own experience and that of his psychiatric patients to help us all understand that the way out of pain is through it.

Trauma Stewardship

Author: Laura van Dernoot Lipsky
Publisher: Berrett-Koehler Publishers
ISBN: 1605095389
Category : Self-Help
Languages : en
Pages : 370

Book Description
This beloved bestseller—over 180,000 copies sold—has helped caregivers worldwide keep themselves emotionally, psychologically, spiritually, and physically healthy in the face of the sometimes overwhelming traumas they confront every day. A longtime trauma worker, Laura van Dernoot Lipsky offers a deep and empathetic survey of the often-unrecognized toll taken on those working to make the world a better place. We may feel tired, cynical, or numb or like we can never do enough. These, and other symptoms, affect us individually and collectively, sapping the energy and effectiveness we so desperately need if we are to benefit humankind, other living things, and the planet itself. In Trauma Stewardship, we are called to meet these challenges in an intentional way. Lipsky offers a variety of simple and profound practices, drawn from modern psychology and a range of spiritual traditions, that enable us to look carefully at our reactions and motivations and discover new sources of energy and renewal. She includes interviews with successful trauma stewards from different walks of life and even uses New Yorker cartoons to illustrate her points. “We can do meaningful work in a way that works for us and for those we serve,” Lipsky writes. “Taking care of ourselves while taking care of others allows us to contribute to our societies with such impact that we will leave a legacy informed by our deepest wisdom and greatest gifts instead of burdened by our struggles and despair.”

Trauma, Tragedy, Therapy

Author: Stephen K. Levine
Publisher: Jessica Kingsley Publishers
ISBN: 1843105128
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 213

Book Description
Stephen K. Levine's new book explores the nature of traumatic experience and the therapeutic role of the arts and arts therapies in responding to it. It suggests that by re-imagining painful and tragic experiences through art-making, we may release their fixity and negative hold on our lives and resist the temptation to assume the role of the victim. Among the many concerns that the book addresses is the damage done by the tendency to adopt stock methods of understanding and superficial explanations for the depths, complexities, wonders, and exasperations of human experience. The book explores the chaos and fragmentation inherent in both art and human existence and the ways in which memory and imagination can find meaning by acknowledging this chaos and embodying it in appropriate forms. The book builds on the important theories of Stephen K. Levine's previous book, Poiesis: The Language of Psychology and the Speech of the Soul, also published by Jessica Kingsley Publishers. It challenges dominant psychological perspectives on trauma and provides a new framework for arts therapists, psychotherapists, psychologists and social scientists to understand the effectiveness of the arts therapies in responding to human suffering.

The Trauma Cleaner

Author: Sarah Krasnostein
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
ISBN: 1250101212
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 302

Book Description
Winner of the Victorian Prize for Literature, Sarah Krasnostein’s The Trauma Cleaner: One Woman’s Extraordinary Life in the Business of Death, Decay, and Disaster is the fascinating biography of one of the people responsible for tidying up homes in the wake of natural—and unnatural—catastrophes and fatalities. Homicides and suicides, fires and floods, hoarders and addicts. When properties are damaged or neglected, it falls to Sandra Pankhurst, founder of Specialized Trauma Cleaning (STC) Services Pty. Ltd. to sift through the ashes or sweep up the mess of a person’s life or death. Her clients include law enforcement, real estate agents, executors of deceased estates, and charitable organizations representing victimized, mentally ill, elderly, and physically disabled people. In houses and buildings that have fallen into disrepair, Sandra airs out residents’ smells, throws out their weird porn, their photos, their letters, the last traces of their DNA entombed in soaps and toothbrushes. The remnants and mementoes of these people’s lives resonate with Sandra. Before she began professionally cleaning up their traumas, she experienced her own. First, as a little boy, raised in violence and excluded from the family home. Then as a husband and father, drag queen, gender reassignment patient, sex worker, small businesswoman, and trophy wife. In each role she played, all Sandra wanted to do was belong. The Trauma Cleaner is the extraordinary true story of an extraordinary person dedicated to making order out of chaos with compassion, revealing the common ground Sandra Pankhurst—and everyone—shares with those struck by tragedy.

Scared Sick

Author: Robin Karr-Morse
Publisher:
ISBN: 0465013546
Category : Health & Fitness
Languages : en
Pages : 322

Book Description
"In Scared Sick, childhood expert and therapist Robin Karr-Morse and lawyer and strategist Meredith Wiley propose that chronic fear experienced in infancy and early childhood lies at the root of numerous diseases as well as emotional and behavioral pathologies in adults."--Jacket.

Time and Trauma

Author: Richard Polt
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1786610515
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 302

Book Description
Offering new insights into Heidegger’s thought based on recently published texts, Richard Polt, one of the most respected contemporary commentators on Heidegger, presents a critical perspective that draws creatively on Heidegger’s thinking and makes original proposals for understanding human existence.

Trauma in First Person

Author: Amos Goldberg
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 0253030218
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 314

Book Description
An examination of what can be learned by looking at the journals and diaries of Jews living during the Holocaust. What are the effects of radical oppression on the human psyche? What happens to the inner self of the powerless and traumatized victim, especially during times of widespread horror? In this bold and deeply penetrating book, Amos Goldberg addresses diary writing by Jews under Nazi persecution. Throughout Europe, in towns, villages, ghettos, forests, hideouts, concentration and labor camps, and even in extermination camps, Jews of all ages and of all cultural backgrounds described in writing what befell them. Goldberg claims that diary and memoir writing was perhaps the most important literary genre for Jews during World War II. Goldberg considers the act of writing in radical situations as he looks at diaries from little-known victims as well as from brilliant diarists such as Chaim Kaplan and Victor Kemperer. Goldberg contends that only against the background of powerlessness and inner destruction can Jewish responses and resistance during the Holocaust gain their proper meaning. “This is a book that deserves to be read well beyond Holocaust studies. Goldberg’s theoretical insights into “life stories” and his readings of law, language and what he calls the “epistemological grey zone” . . . provide a stunning antidote to our unthinking treatment of survivors as celebrities (as opposed to just people who have suffered terrible things) and to the ubiquity of commemorative platitudes.” —Times Higher Education “Every decade or so, an exceptional volume is born. Provocative and inspiring, historian Goldberg’s volume is one such work in the field of Holocaust studies. . . . Highly recommended.” —Choice “Amos Goldberg’s Trauma in First Person: Diary Writing During the Holocaust is an important and thought-provoking book not only on reading Holocaust diaries, but also on what that reading can tell us about the extent of the destruction committed against Jews during the Holocaust.” —Reading Religion “Amos Goldberg’s work offers an innovative approach to the subject matter of Holocaust diaries and challenges well-established views in the whole field of Holocaust studies. This is a comprehensive discussion of the phenomenon of Jewish diary writing during the Holocaust and after.” —Guy Miron. Author of The Waning of Emancipation: Jewish History, Memory, and the Rise of Fascism in Germany, France, and Hungary “This is an important contribution to trauma studies and a powerful critique of those who use the “crisis” paradigm to study the Holocaust.” —Dovile Budryt, Georgia Gwinnett College, Holocaust and Genocide Studies

The Choice

Author: Edith Eva Eger
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1501130811
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 228

Book Description
A New York Times Bestseller “I’ll be forever changed by Dr. Eger’s story…The Choice is a reminder of what courage looks like in the worst of times and that we all have the ability to pay attention to what we’ve lost, or to pay attention to what we still have.”—Oprah “Dr. Eger’s life reveals our capacity to transcend even the greatest of horrors and to use that suffering for the benefit of others. She has found true freedom and forgiveness and shows us how we can as well.” —Desmond Tutu, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate “Dr. Edith Eva Eger is my kind of hero. She survived unspeakable horrors and brutality; but rather than let her painful past destroy her, she chose to transform it into a powerful gift—one she uses to help others heal.” —Jeannette Walls, New York Times bestselling author of The Glass Castle Winner of the National Jewish Book Award and Christopher Award At the age of sixteen, Edith Eger was sent to Auschwitz. Hours after her parents were killed, Nazi officer Dr. Josef Mengele, forced Edie to dance for his amusement and her survival. Edie was pulled from a pile of corpses when the American troops liberated the camps in 1945. Edie spent decades struggling with flashbacks and survivor’s guilt, determined to stay silent and hide from the past. Thirty-five years after the war ended, she returned to Auschwitz and was finally able to fully heal and forgive the one person she’d been unable to forgive—herself. Edie weaves her remarkable personal journey with the moving stories of those she has helped heal. She explores how we can be imprisoned in our own minds and shows us how to find the key to freedom. The Choice is a life-changing book that will provide hope and comfort to generations of readers.