An Existential Approach to Interpersonal Trauma

An Existential Approach to Interpersonal Trauma provides a new existential framework for understanding the experiences of interpersonal trauma building on reflections from Marc Boaz’s own personal history, clinical insight and research.

The book suggests that psychology, psychotherapy and existentialism do not recognise the significance of the existential movements that occur in traumatic confrontations with reality. By considering what people find at the limits and boundaries of human experiencing, Boaz describes the ways in which they can disillusion and re-illusion themselves, and how this becomes incorporated into their modes of existing in the world and in relation to others. In incorporating the experience of trauma into the way people live – all the existential horror, terror and liberation contained within it – Boaz invites them to embrace an expansive ethic of (re)(dis)covery. This ethic recognises the ambiguity and spectrality of interpersonal trauma, and expands the horizons of our human relationships.

The book provides an important basis for professionals wanting to work existentially with interpersonal trauma and for people wanting to deepen their understanding of the trauma they have experienced.

Marc Boaz is an existential psychotherapist and visiting professor in public mental health at the University of Northampton. He is a founding member of, and policy advisor to, the UK Trauma Council, hosted by the Anna Freud Centre for Children and Families. Marc also serves on the Disability Advisory Committee of the Equality and Human Rights Commission. He focuses on the relationships between philosophy, social policy, practice and lived experience in the fields of disability, mental health, long-term conditions and youth.