Trauma and the Supernatural in Psychotherapy: Working with the Curse Position in Clinical Practice - Alex Monk

The author Alex Monk will be in discussion with Marsha Hewitt, a professor of religion in the Department for the Study of Religion at the University of Toronto, at our online event on the 26th of October. Find out more here.

Trauma and the Supernatural in Psychotherapy explores how traumatic experience interacts with unconscious phantasy based in folklore, the supernatural, and the occult.

Drawing upon psychoanalysis, anthropology, the arts, and esoteric philosophy, Alex Monk presents examples from folklore and literature to enrich his case illustrations which offer therapists important clinical perspectives on ways of working with clients who feel cursed and repeatedly manifest self-sabotaging states.

The book examines the challenges that can arise when working with this client population and illustrates how to work through them while navigating potent transferences and projective identifications. Monk illustrates the way in which clients with developmental trauma may experience the supernatural and its psychic representatives as persecutory and/or a source of empowerment and healing.

Trauma and the Supernatural in Psychotherapy also considers the historically conflicted relationship between psychoanalysis and the supernatural and proposes treatment perspectives which are not implicitly dependent upon a materialist paradigm.

Publisher: Routledge

Published: June 2023

Format: Paperback

Pages: 180

Dimensions: 15.6 x 1.04 x 23.4 cm