Traumatizing events can break a person. However, a series of small but inevitable pinpricks, lovelessness and ambivalent relationships can also ruin a person. A traumatic event touches and invades a person unspeakably deeply. This book attempts to put into words the psychic abyss of trauma, which the victim experiences, and helps to detect and understand possible traumatization. It wants to encourage traumatized people and their counsellors to choose the path of small steps out of the trauma. In this way, previously traumatized people can rediscover their dignity. The path leads from an existence dictated by the outside world to a self-determined life.
It is a challenge to talk about values and a provocation to call them "valid". But it is necessary when human dignity is at stake. Freedom, love, truth and life determine and protect this dignity. The highest value is life; when it is threatened, one loses the experience of dignity. Mere autonomy going beyond value-oriented freedom can threaten life, physically and psychologically. If we do not respect our livelihoods, we threaten them. Genuine love of one's neighbour prevents tolerance from turning into populist, intolerant ideologies. Dignity as the standard for our coexistence gives rise to hope. Therefore, this book invites us to think, feel and act responsibly for a life ‘in fullness’ (John 10:10).
Christian ethics, also called moral theology in the tradition, is one of the most controversial topics within theology, as well as outside it. Yet the goal of these ethics is `a life in fullness and freedom'. Without ethical guidelines and personal responsibility, a life cannot succeed. Norms and laws aim to create space for life and protect it. To fill this freedom, people are responsible for that. And being responsible means: owing an answer to someone. Ethics therefore always takes place in relation: to one's own conscience, to the good that can be accomplished, and in relation to other living beings and nature. Christian ethics, moreover, places this responsibility in relation to God. People are free, but also limited; they hurt each other and need forgiveness and reconciliation. Often people can reconcile with each other, but sometimes accounts remain open: the evil was too great or the reconciliation failed. Christian theology can refer to redemption here. It is just not easy to reconcile its content with the everyday reality of modern people. This systematic introduction to moral theology offers an explanation in understandable anthropological terms. It shows how the Christian message provides a meaningful answer to the open question of how a human life can succeed. Anyone who tries to mediate meaningfully between tradition and modernity in the pastoral practice of the church will find this book a guide.
In the stillness of the courtroom a bookseller stands accused of selling a book. Is it a work of sensitive genius or an execrable volume of pornography? Could it have driven a respectable college boy to commit brutal rape? And who is the author of the novel at the vortex of a storm of sensation and controversy? Michael Barret has been asked by a friend to join him in a small law partnership, but has also been offered a huge salary to go into big business. He's certain of his choice, till he is given a chance to be involved with a major case involved with protecting free speech. The case is about the explicit book "The Seven Minutes", which some people consider pornography, while others, Barret included, feel is impressive literature. The main focus of the prosecution's case is a teenager who bought the book, and was soon after arrested for rape. According to the prosecution, the book insinuated the boy to do what he did, so it must be banned. The novel follows the course of the trial, as both Barret and the prosecutor search for reputable witnesses to prove their side.
Talking About Love on the Edge of a Precipiceis a book filled with hope. All of us suffer from trauma in our lives, whether it be a difficult childhood, the end of a love affair, or a violent experience. Yet rather than be controlled by our pain, it is possible for us to grow in the face of our problems and create a new life for ourselves. In his groundbreaking work on the healing power of resilience, Boris Cyrulnik has created a new way for us to understand ourselves and our pasts. He shows how we are all changed by trauma, but that we can choose either to submit to it as if it were our destiny, or break free and come back to life. The answer lies in making use of our pain and giving it meaning. Whether it occurs during adolescence, meeting a partner or having children ourselves, resilience comes from modifying our personal histories and how we see ourselves inside - literally remaking our life story. By translating trauma into words, we choose to live again. Ultimately, this book is a celebration of the healing, transforming power of love.
In this book, Ron Eyerman explores the formation of the African-American identity through the theory of cultural trauma. The trauma in question is slavery, not as an institution or as personal experience, but as collective memory: a pervasive remembrance that grounded a people's sense of itself. Combining a broad narrative sweep with more detailed studies of important events and individuals, Eyerman reaches from Emancipation through the Harlem Renaissance, the Depression, the New Deal and the Second World War to the Civil Rights movement and beyond. He offers insights into the intellectual and generational conflicts of identity-formation which have a truly universal significance, as well as providing a compelling account of the birth of African-American identity. Anyone interested in questions of assimilation, multiculturalism and postcolonialism will find this book indispensable.
In this revised and expanded second edition, Dr. Horowitz places special emphasis on treatment. The chapters on diagnosis, theory and therapeutic technique have been extensively revised. In ten years since the publication of the first edition, Dr. Horowitz has continued to direct the Centre for the Study of Neurosis at the Langley Porter Psychiatric Institute of the University of California, placing particular emphasis on psychotherapy of stress response syndromes. This clinical work has provided the background for a greatly expanded discussion of treatment technique and a new chapter on therapeutics of stress response syndromes. Mental health professional who want to be effective with patients experiencing the stress of bereavement, traumatic accident, medical illness or other life events should find this book a useful guide.
This book explores the intersection of clinical and social aspects of traumatic experiences in postdictatorial and post-war societies, forced migration, and other circumstances of collective violence. Contributors outline conceptual approaches, treatment methods, and research strategies for understanding social traumatizations in a wider conceptual frame that includes both clinical psychology and psychiatry. Accrued from a seven year interdisciplinary and international dialogue, the book presents multiple scholarly and practical views from clinical psychology and psychiatry to social and cultural theory, developmental psychology, memory studies, law, research methodology, ethics, and education. Among the topics discussed: Theory of social trauma Psychoanalytic and psychotherapeutic approaches to social trauma Memory studies Developmental psychology of social trauma Legal and ethical aspects Specific methodology and practice in social trauma research Social Trauma: An International Textbook fills a critical gap between clinical and social theories of trauma, offering a basis for university teaching as well as an overview for all who are involved in the modern issues of victims of social violence. It will be a useful reference for students, teachers, and researchers in psychology, medicine, education, and political science, as well as for therapists and mental health practitioners dealing with survivors of collective violence, persecution, torture and forced migration.
'At last we have a book that provides a comprehensive overview and assessment of the intersubjective turn in psychoanalysis, showing its logical and clinical limitations and exploring its social and cultural determinants. Bohleber emphasizes the clinical importance of real traumatic experience along with the analysis of the transference as he reviews and broadens psychoanalytic theories of memory in relation to advances in cognitive psychology and neuroscience. Psychoanalytic ideas on personality, adolescence and identity are re-thought and updated. Bohleber brilliantly presents a unique understanding of malignant narcissism and prejudice in relation to European anti-Semitism and to contemporary religiously inspired terrorist violence.'- Cyril Levitt, Dr Phil, Professor and former Chair Department of Sociology, McMaster University Hamilton, Ontario. Psychoanalyst in private practice, Toronto, Ontario
