Bouncing Back and Moving Forward: Resilience, the Joseph Narrative and Addiction Recovery
Journal: COMMUNIO VIATORUM
Year: 2025

The use of biblical narrative is an important resource in the practice of pastoral care and counselling. In this paper, which draws on the psychology of resilience as well as recent work on trauma and resilience hermeneutics, it is argued that the Joseph novella can be a useful resource for helping people to develop resilience in their journey of recovery from substance abuse. Joseph’s experiences of complex family relationships, abandonment, betrayal, estrangement, and imprisonment are deeply r