1st Edition
by Evija Volfa Vestergaard (Author)
Trauma, Cultural Complexes, and Transformation: Folk Narratives and Present Realities
contributes to our understanding of how culturally traumatic events
affect present day realities, and suggests the potential for healing by
combining theories on psychological trauma, cultural complexes, and
transformations. It draws on insight from a range of disciplines,
including Jungian psychology, literary criticism, folkloristics,
neurosciences, quantum physics, and social studies.
Evija Volfa
Vestergaard maps folk narratives of human encounters with extra-human
entities as communications of cultural traumas suffered by tellers who
are embedded in particular historical and geographical settings,
focusing on the little-explored globally emerging cultures of Latvia and
South Africa, alongside the United States of America. These cultural
narratives form a bridge to a discourse on the social, political, and
economic issues faced by these countries and the world at large.
Vestergaard outlines the parallels between dreams and visions of
individuals essential in healing, and the mythological legend genre
serving the same function for groups and cultures, demonstrating that
the aim of these open-ended communications is not only to reveal hidden
truth, but also to stir our imagination about potentialities. Healing of
traumas demands a world of global relatedness based on nurturing
kinship, and such a transformation begins with imagining.
Trauma, Cultural Complexes, and Transformation
represents essential reading for academics and students of Jungian and
post-Jungian studies, folklore, psychology, cultural studies and
anthropology, as well as Jungian analysts and psychotherapists.
