About the Book
This book explores traumatic loss, grief, and recovery through the thoughtful combination of Abraham & Torok’s ‘crypt’ theory, Jungian thought, and film theory to guide readers through the darkest places of the human psyche.
Focusing on both the destructive and reconstructive choices people can make, the book explores prolonged grief disorder, complicated mourning, post-traumatic stress disorder, embitterment, disenfranchised grief, trauma-related rumination as well as mental, emotional and physical pain. Presented with real life examples and fictional ones, the book connects the psychoanalytic concepts of intrapsychic tomb and theoretra with Jungian concepts such as teleological model of the psyche, dreams, alchemical operations, shadow, archetypes, enantiodromia, symbols, and compensation on the canvas of modern grief theory.
Traumatic Loss and Recovery in Jungian Studies and Cinema is important reading for psychoanalysts, Jungian analysts, and psychotherapists with an interest in popular culture, as well as cinema students, scholars, and general readers interested in psychology, counselling, mental health and media studies.
Table of Contents:
Introduction PART 1: From the past to the present 1. A brief history of grief theory 2. A brief look at the intersections of psychoanalysis, film theory, and Jungian studies 3. New perspectives in mental health through film analysis PART II: Tales of loss and recovery 4. Suicide and Solaris 5. Murder and The Brave One 6. Nihilism and The Bank 7. Human connection and A Single Man 8. Letting go and Saving Mr. Banks 9. Forgiveness and Rabbit Hole 10. Self-compassion and Cake Further examples and concluding thoughts
About the Author :
Mark Holmwood, PhD, is a researcher, author, and photographer. Following his MA and training in TA Counselling and Psychotherapy, he creatively combined his grief experience, clinical theory, cinema, and Jungian thought for this book.
Review :
"Mark Holmwood portrays the intimate, passionate, and powerful processes of human loss, grief, trauma, and healing. He explores these through the lens of selected films and psychoanalytical concepts, taking the reader through a compelling journey of bereavement and grief that is both disturbing and captivating.
Mark includes a powerful autobiographical dimension whilst weaving an accessible account in which rich analyses of film characters interconnect with theory to craft enthralling cases of love, hate, loss, destruction, and redemption. He courageously profiles personal experience and critical analyses to creatively construct a narrative that will impact a wide and diverse readership in multiple ways. From those involved in the film industry, to academics, practitioners working with loss and grief, and people experiencing bereavement, this book offers essential reading."
Lynne Gabriel, Professor of Counselling and Mental Health, York St John University, York, UK
"Sensitively written, Holmwood’s book offers a unique insight into traumatic bereavement. Through a series of poignant and holistic analyses of fictionalised trauma in films, this research offers a valuable contribution to thought in this area, with the potential to influence both therapists and filmmakers alike."
Professor Terry Perk, University for the Creative Arts, UK
"Mark’s work presents a distinctive insight into the unbearable pain of suicide. He examines the filmmaker’s vision of trauma alongside his own and offers the general reader, professional and survivor alike, warm, wise, and accessible thought which they in turn can benefit from. This is a unique offering."
Peter Bridgewater, Founder of Ivy Press & of the Lewes group of Survivors of Bereavement by Suicide, UK
