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

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. This book will be of great interest to psychotherapists and counsellors who have an interest in clinical work concerning the connection of relational trauma to unconscious forms of communication and uncanny phenomena arising between therapist and client.