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What Doesn't Kill Us: The New Psychology of Posttraumatic Growth
For the past twenty years, pioneering psychologist Stephen Joseph has worked with survivors of trauma. His studies have yielded a startling discovery: that a wide range of traumatic eventsfrom illness, divorce, separation, assault, and bereavement to accidents, natural disasters, and terrorismcan act as catalysts for positive change. Boldly challenging the conventional w
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Hardcover, 288 pages
Published
November 1st 2011
by Basic Books
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An ABSOLUTE must read if you're ever faced with a traumatic experience or if you're trying to understand someone who's going through such an experience.
What's so wonderful about this book is that it's not written in a cold clinical manner unlike so many other books. Instead it's written with a guiding hand, one that provides comfort while explaining both the medical and psychological aspects and how they relate and feed off one another. It provides insightful excerpts from a variety of persons...more
What's so wonderful about this book is that it's not written in a cold clinical manner unlike so many other books. Instead it's written with a guiding hand, one that provides comfort while explaining both the medical and psychological aspects and how they relate and feed off one another. It provides insightful excerpts from a variety of persons...more
Whether you're a survivor (or as author Stephen Joseph would say,"thriver") of trauma or a psychotherapist working with people who have experienced trauma, this is an essential read.
While "Trauma and Recovery" by Judith Hermann (excellent book!) explains the ins and outs of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder, "What Doesn't Kill Us" has more of a 'positive psychology' approach. If you are drawn to the works of Viktor Frankl ("Man's Search For Meaning") and Abraham Maslow (ie, self-actualization) as I...more
While "Trauma and Recovery" by Judith Hermann (excellent book!) explains the ins and outs of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder, "What Doesn't Kill Us" has more of a 'positive psychology' approach. If you are drawn to the works of Viktor Frankl ("Man's Search For Meaning") and Abraham Maslow (ie, self-actualization) as I...more
The author, an English professor of psychology, is a proponent of the "new" Positive Psychology. Like our Grandmas always told us, it's not so much what happens to someone as how they handle it/what you do with it that is the true test of character. Instead of abetting survivors of trauma to wallow endlessly in their misfortune, the new school of thought believes in encouraging them to "use" their experience/insight to do something positive. Seems like common sense doesn't it? Common sense is no...more
The primary thesis of this book is that there are three long term responses to traumatic events. The most common is that people get through, and continue on in life. The second, getting a lot of press today are people who find themselves at a lose, losing capabilities, with the most extreme being PTSD. While this book looks at both these responses. it focuses on a third outcome (one much more common that PTSD), that people grow substantially as a result of the trauma. I would highly recommend th...more
Maybe I had hopes that were too high for this book. I liked it, but because of all the other extensive reading I've done on trauma, much of this was review and nothing new. I liked how things were couched, though, as well as the physiological explanations/causes that have been found in recent years.
Excellent overview of the work that has been done on posttraumatic growth. Certainly beneficial to read from both a scholarly viewpoint as well as from a personal viewpoint: because life always changes.
Fantastic information, and relevant to all of us as we all experience tragedy at one point or another. My only criticism is the organization of material; I felt that Joseph repeated information, and it wasn't completely clear as to what would be covered in each chapter. As a result, I found the same pieces of information cropping up again and again. It seemed like he was bursting with ideas and put them all down without later cleaning them up and keeping his narrative succinct. Overall, a wonder...more
An interesting read. Definitely written more for people in the psychology field than the lay person. More focused on PTSD than I would have thought given the book's description.
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