An Integrative Approach to Healing Complex and Transgenerational Trauma: Psychotherapy and the Soul

This book presents an integrative relational approach to treating trauma and psychological entanglements through autobiographical, philosophical and clinical reflections on the transgenerational dimension of the human experience and the self as an irreducible core of the person. The book commences with the author’s own journey growing up in a Jewish family deeply affected by transgenerational trauma from the Holocaust, providing an inspiring and reflective backdrop to this book’s contents. Isaac Pizer then describes and explains his philosophy of therapy, which holds psychotherapy and the treatment of trauma as a relational process that requires an inclusive awareness of the following dimensions of human experiencing: the physical, intrapsychic, relational, transgenerational, transpersonal. Exploring a psychotherapy that holds and integrates transgenerational awareness in the treatment of complex trauma, this book is supplemented with case studies and the author’s own experiences. This compelling and thought-provoking book is intended for therapists, therapists in training and people seeking knowledge and encouragement in their journeys of personal and collective healing, self-realisation and personal growth.

Table of Contents:
Introduction 1. Walking Home 2. Transpersonal Theory and the Jewish Contribution to Psychotherapy 3. My Philosophy of Therapy: The Therapeutic Relationship, the Self and Trauma 4. Theory and Practice - Relationship, Contact and the Healing of Trauma 5. Lily, Emily and Angela 6. The Transgenerational Dimension 7. The Transgenerational Dimension in Practice 8. Trauma, Identity Politics and Psychotherapy 9. Carrie: Recovery of the Self Concluding Thoughts Appendix: Clients’ Reflections

About the Author :
Isaac Pizer is an accredited psychotherapist and a clinical supervisor. Pizer worked for many years as a social worker and commenced training in psychotherapy in 1992. He holds a BSc in Sociology, a Diploma in Gestalt Psychotherapy (2000), an MA in Humanistic Person-Centred Psychotherapy (2003) and a Diploma in Clinical Supervision (2015). isaacpizer.com

Review :
‘Reflecting decades of experience as a psychotherapist, this book offers a moving approach to the understanding and treatment of trauma. Isaac Pizer emphasizes an intergenerational framework of understanding and the importance of the human relationship in effecting recovery. Drawing widely from the fields of psychoanalysis, Gestalt therapy, analytical psychology and transpersonal psychology, the text is to be applauded for its scope of reference. With an outlook that is deeply personal without sacrificing its relevance to clinicians, Pizer offers a compelling mediation on Jewishness and the nature of collective trauma’. Robin S. Brown, PhD, psychoanalyst in private practice and author of Groundwork for a Transpersonal Psychoanalysis ‘Isaac Pizer re-visions many of the core Gestalt concepts in order to integrate his ideas about trauma and the transpersonal in a way that is a genuine contribution to the Gestalt literature and method’. Professor Charlotte Sills, co-author of Skills in Gestalt Counselling & Psychotherapy, psychotherapist, supervisor and coach ‘With An Integrative Approach to Healing Complex and Transgenerational Trauma , Isaac Pizer has written a wonderfully engaging and soulful account, generously supported with abundant case material and richly substantiated with references from his close acquaintance with the relevant literature, which is a call for us all, in our therapeutic work with psychological trauma, to follow his own journey – as a Gestalt therapist deeply imbued with the radical relationality of Martin Buber – to engage also with the depth of the realms of the transpersonal and the transgenerational. As an integration of theory and practice this book is a veritable tour de force which I found both moving and inspiring, and it will certainly encourage and enrich your own practice as it has mine’. Dr Gordon Barclay, MA, MPhil, MRCGP, MRCP, MRCPsych, retired NHS consultant psychiatrist, CAT therapist, founder/trainer of TDS (Towards a Dialectical Self)