Hungry Ghosts: Psychotherapy, control and the winds of homecoming

Drawing on Gregory Bateson's concept of epistemology and Jerome Bernstein's work on collective trauma, Robertson explores how what he calls 'hungry ghosts' - unmet needs and unprocessed collective or trans-generational trauma - surface in the therapy room, often mistaken by clients for purely personal history. He describes a clinical vignette in which attending to his own felt sense of grief and 'soul-making', rather than directing the client verbally, allowed a shift to occur. Robertson argues that Western individualism makes it easy to locate collective phenomena within one's own life story, exacerbating personal pain, and that psychotherapy faces a choice: continue domesticating clients' distress within existing cultural norms, or undergo its own 'deconstruction' to open space for renewal. Note: this excerpt draws on retrieved passages rather than confirmed opening paragraphs; worth checking against the full text.