What if philosophy could solve the psychological puzzle of trauma?
Embodied Trauma and Healing argues just that, suggesting that one
might be needed in order to understand the other. The book demonstrates
how the body-mind problem that haunted Descartes was addressed by
phenomenologists, whilst also proposing that the human experience is
lived subjectively as embodied consciousness.
Throughout this book, the author suggests that the phenomenological
tools that are used to explore the body can also be an effective way to
discuss the physical and mental aspects of embodied trauma. Drawing on
the work of Paul Ricoeur, Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Emmanuel Lévinas,
the book outlines a phenomenological approach to the embodied and
relational subject. It offers a reading of embodied trauma that can
connect it to wider conversations in psychological underpinnings of
trauma through Peter Levine's somatic research and Bessel van der Kolk's
embodied remembering. Connecting to the analytic tradition, the book
suggests that phenomenology can unify both language-based and body-based
therapeutic practice. It also presents a compelling discussion that ties
the embodied experience of relation in trauma to the wider causal
factors of social suffering and relational rupture, intergenerational
trauma and the trauma of land, as informed by phenomenology.
Embodied Trauma and Healing is essential reading for researchers
within the fields of philosophy, psychology and medical humanities for
it actively engages with contemporary configurations of trauma theory
and recent research developments in healing and mental disorder
diagnosis.
