Psychological Growth After Trauma

Simon Wharne is a chartered counselling psychologist and existential psychotherapist who has experience in clinical practice, leadership, and education.

“This book is an eye-opener for anyone who works with trauma. Understanding, practice, and investigation are all integrated in a brilliant and needed complement to the existing literature.”Alfried Längle, MD, PhD, professor of psychotherapy at the Sigmund Freud University, Vienna, and the University of Klagenfurt, Austria“The field of trauma studies often fails to consider relational and contextual aspects of trauma. Psychological Growth After Trauma seeks to correct that, exploring the experience of a variety of traumas, many of which frequently go under the radar. In all these contributions, the phenomenology of traumatic experience is foregrounded and should be a significant resource for therapists trying to avoid adhering too rigidly to the fashionable formulations du jour.”Martin Milton, professor of counselling psychology and existential psychotherapist

• 1. Introduction: The Possibility of Posttraumatic Growth Part 1: New Awareness in the Experience of Women 2. Birth Trauma and Existential Crisis: How Becoming a Mother Involves a Confrontation with Existence 3. Experiences of Women Living Beyond Rape and Interpersonal Violence Part 2: Developing a Self Through Early Life Trauma 4. Emerging from Adolescent Sexual Grooming: The Need for Truth 5. The Coexistence of Posttraumatic Stress and Posttraumatic Growth Related to Childhood Trauma Part 3: Encountering Death 6. Living with Traumatic Bereavement 7. Surviving Near Death Following Cardiac Arrest Part 4: In the Aftermath of Colonialism, Political Conflict, and War 8. Lived Experiences of Antiblack Racism: Is the Impact Always a Permanent Psychological Scar, or Can There Be Growth? 9. Political Refugees: Rising Above Trauma 10. The Impact of Active Military Service on Intimate Relationships: Trauma, Breakdown, and Breakthrough 11. Trauma: The Search for a Poisoned Chalice? Part 5: Trauma as it Emerges in the Therapeutic Encounter 12. Applying a Hermeneutic Phenomenological Lens: A Literary Review Observes the Impact of Client Suicide on the Therapist 13. Carrying the Torch of Hope: An Investigation into the Experiences of Shared Interpersonal Trauma in the Therapeutic Relationship 14. Vicarious Trauma and Growth in Mental Health Workers Part 6: Making Sense of Our Work with Trauma 15. Trauma and Existence: Existential-Humanistic Understandings of Trauma, with Existential-Analytic and Phenomenological Implications for Practice