num_pages: 186
description: Whereas a dream is specific to an individual dreamer, a myth is an ancestral dream generated by a culture. Both dream and myth describe the processes of the unconscious mind, myth as the unconscious process on a universal level applicable to all. One cause of the behavioral, emotional and mental torment in a person's life is the psychological trauma that results from the actions and words of parents and others. This volume, Grendel and His Mother: Healing the Traumas of Childhood Through Dreams, Imagery and Hypnosis by Nicholas E. Brink examines the effect of such trauma on a child's development and how the resulting torment eventually brings this child as an adult to psychotherapy. This trauma may be as subtle as a parental sigh of disappointment or as direct as physical or sexual abuse. Six clients are then led on a journeying through the unconscious mind using dreamwork, hypnosis and imagery in the course of therapy to uncover and heal these traumas to free the client of torment. As recorded in the Old English myth of Beowulf, Beowulf frees the Danish King Hrothgar from twelve years of torment by killing two monsters, Grendel and his mother. This legend, when examined as an ancestral dream, offers a map for the journey through the unconscious mind to heal childhood trauma and provides an outline for this book. First, each client finds the strength to conquer the more immediate torment of the behavioral, emotional or thought disorder-Grendel-and then to uncover and overcome in a four-step process the deeper cause of this torment, the original trauma-Grendel's mother.
language: English
title: Grendel and His Mother: Healing the Traumas of Childhood Through Dreams, Imagery, and Hypnosis
titlecomplete: Grendel and His Mother: Healing the Traumas of Childhood Through Dreams, Imagery, and Hypnosis (Imagery and Human Development Series)
publisher: Routledge