Accentuating the positive: Self-actualising post-traumatic growth processes (original) (raw)

It is not altogether uncommon, in the aftermath of traumatic life events, for individuals and groups to report that they have had experiences and faced processes that have led to significant personal changes and positive psychological growth... This chapter offers a number of contributions to trauma theory, and specifically post-traumatic growth, that informs our fuller consideration of the role of psycho-spiritual transformation in the processes, outcomes, and management of trauma beginning with: Abraham Maslow's theory of peak experience and self-actualisation and Carl Rogers's organismic valuing process; Stanislav Grof's holotropic paradigm and formulation of psycho-spiritual transformation; the research conduted by Lawrence Calhoun and Richard Tedeschion post-traumatic growth: and, Martin Seligman and Stephen Joseph's conceptualisations of positive psychology. Together these interdisciplinary strands capture something of the a prevailing optimism and a shared understanding that the struggle of post-traumatic experience may, for some at least, offer the potential for personal growth.