Exploring the role of imagination in trauma recovery, the author shares the arresting dreams and stories of traumatized adolescents. Describing the impact of trauma on adolescent health and development, the author provides promising research into the use of breathing skills, HRV Biofeedback, and dream work to promote healthy breathing, emotion regulation, and restorative dreaming. Research suggests that these interventions can decrease post-traumatic distress and assist in the creation of meaningful posttraumatic narratives. The author explores the role of embodied imagination in adolescent spiritual development and posttraumatic growth. These interventions provide clinicians and pastoral caregivers with simple and effective ways of helping adolescents heal from trauma in holistic and dynamic ways that respect the integrated constitution of the human person.

Introducing a proven, pioneering program that empowers trauma survivors to take control of their recovery through imaginative exercises Over the last thirty-five years, our understanding of trauma has dramatically changed. We now know that most people live through at least one traumatic event—which can cause disorders that range from depression, addiction, and anxiety, to cardiovascular disease and diabetes. But when leading German psychotherapist Luise Reddemann became head of a psychosomatic clinic in 1985, many doctors were routinely dismissive of patients’ trauma. Dr. Reddemann has devoted her career to this question: How can survivors of complex trauma and PTSD heal—and even help themselves to heal? In Who You Were Before Trauma, she presents her groundbreaking method, along with positive therapeutic strategies, to therapists and patients alike. Psychodynamic Imaginative Trauma Therapy (PITT) incorporates imagination work at every stage of the three-phase trauma therapy model: Establish safety and stabilization Come to terms with traumatic memories Integrate and reconnect with others. By guiding patients to unearth their buried strengths, envision an inner refuge, evoke helpful guiding figures, and ultimately build an “internal counterweight” to their trauma, Reddemann’s approach avoids the counterproductive dynamic where the therapist becomes the patient’s only source of comfort. This definitive trauma resource shows the way to empower survivors—by making them true partners in their recovery.

"Psychological trauma can be a life-changing experience that affects multiple facets of health and well-being. The nature of trauma is to impact the mind and body in unpredictable and multidimensional ways. It can be a highly subjective that is difficult or even impossible to explain with words. It also can impact the body in highly individualized ways and result in complex symptoms that affect memory, social engagement, and quality of life. While many people overcome trauma with resilience and without long term effects, many do not. Trauma's impact often requires approaches that address the sensory-based experiences many survivors report. The expressive arts therapy-the purposeful application of art, music, dance/movement, dramatic enactment, creative writing and imaginative play-are largely non-verbal ways of self-expression of feelings and perceptions. More importantly, they are action-oriented and tap implicit, embodied experiences of trauma that can defy expression through verbal therapy or logic. Based on current evidence-based and emerging brain-body practices, there are eight key reasons for including expressive arts in trauma intervention, covered in this book: (1) letting the senses tell the story; (2) self-soothing mind and body; (3) engaging the body; (4) enhancing nonverbal communication; (5) recovering self-efficacy; (6) rescripting the trauma story; (7) making meaning; and (8) restoring aliveness"--

Rich with case material and artwork samples, this volume demonstrates a range of creative approaches for facilitating children's emotional reparation and recovery from trauma. Contributors include experienced practitioners of play, art, music, movement and drama therapies, bibliotherapy, and integrative therapies, who describe step-by-step strategies for working with individual children, families, and groups. The case-based format makes the book especially practical and user-friendly. Specific types of stressful experiences addressed include parental loss, child abuse, accidents, family violence, bullying, and mass trauma. Broader approaches to promoting resilience and preventing posttraumatic problems in children at risk are also presented.

Children are widely celebrated for their imaginations, but developmental research on this topic has often been fragmented or narrowly focused on fantasy. However, there is growing appreciation for the role that imagination plays in cognitive and emotional development, as well as its link with children's understanding of the real world. With their imaginations, children mentally transcend time, place, and/or circumstance to think about what might have been, plan and anticipate the future, create fictional relationships and worlds, and consider alternatives to the actual experiences of their lives. The Oxford Handbook of the Development of Imagination provides a comprehensive overview of this broad new perspective by bringing together leading researchers whose findings are moving the study of imagination from the margins of mainstream psychology to a central role in current efforts to understand human thought. The topics covered include fantasy-reality distinctions, pretend play, magical thinking, narrative, anthropomorphism, counterfactual reasoning, mental time travel, creativity, paracosms, imaginary companions, imagination in non-human animals, the evolution of imagination, autism, dissociation, and the capacity to derive real life resilience from imaginative experiences. Many of the chapters include discussions of the educational, clinical, and legal implications of the research findings and special attention is given to suggestions for future research.

As in her former books, Alice Miller again focusses on facts. She is as determined as ever to cut through the veil that, for thousands of years now, has been so meticulously woven to shroud the truth. And when she lifts that veil and brushes it aside, the results are astonishing, as is amply demonstrated by her analyses of the works of Nietzsche, Picasso, Kollwitz, Keaton and others. With the key shunned by so many for so long - childhood - she opens rusty looks and offers her readers a wealth of unexpected perspectives.What did Picasso express in "Guernica"? Why did Buster Keaton never smile? Why did Nietzsche heap so much opprobrium on women and religion, and lose his mind for eleven years? Why did Hitler and Stalin become tyrannical mass murderers? Alice Miller investigates these and other questions thoroughly in this book. She draws from her discoveries the conclusion that human beings are not "innately" destructive, that they are made that way by ignorance, abuse, and neglect, particularly if no sympathetic witness comes to their aid. She also shows why some mistreated children do not become criminals but instead bear witness as artists to the truth about their childhoods, even though in purely intuitive and unconscious ways.