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Trauma, Tragedy, Therapy: The Arts and Human Suffering
Author(s): Stephen K. Levine (Author)
- Publisher: Jessica Kingsley Publishers Ltd
- Publication Date: September 15, 2009
- Edition: 1st
- Language: English
- Print length: 208 pages
- ISBN-10: 1843105128
- ISBN-13: 9781843105121
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.
Editorial Reviews
Review
Stephen K. Levine’s TRAUMA, TRAGEDY, THERAPY: THE ARTS AND HUMAN SUFFERING provides a powerful exploration of the nature of trauma and how the arts and arts therapies can help…His challeneges popular psychological perspectives on trauma and provides a different framework for arts therapists and psychologists to understand its course and effectiveness. Health libraries strong in psychology will find this a fine pick. Author: The Midwest Book Revies
Deeply prychological, Stephen Levine goes over being at the bottom of life, chaos, healing, and the human body. Trauma, Tragedy, Therapy is a top pick for addition to arts and psychology collections for community and college libraries. Author: The Midwest Book Reviews
On the whole, Levine makes an important contribution to the field of trauma study by identifying philosophical problems within the current field of trauma study. He then shows how a new discourse, a new imagination of the problem and of new possibilities, can be created through the expressive arts therapies…What Levine has done with Trauma, Tragedy, Therapy is an enormous gift to the literature on the psychology of trauma, and it lays the foundation for careful and productive new studies. Author: PsycCRITIQUES
This is a stimulating and challenging book which deserves careful reading by all types of psychological therapist. It will augment the more familiar psychological literature and, perhaps, prompt re-evaluation of clinical practice. Author: Clinical Psychology Forum
About the Author
Shaun McNiff PhD, ATR is the Provost and Dean of Endicott College in Beverly, Massachusetts. An internationally-renowned figure in the creative arts therapies, he has written many critically-acclaimed books including Art as Medicine: Creating a Therapy of the Imagination,Educating the Creative Arts Therapist and Depth Psychology of Art. Dr McNiff has been honoured on many occasions for his pioneering contributions to the creative arts therapy field, and he is the 1997 recipient of the America Art Therapy Association’s Honorary Life Member Award.
