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9 This book provides several examples of how mythic conflicts can be resolved; for one, it is possible to deepen one's faith in God while simultaneously losing one's ties to a religious congregation. Rethinking one's concept of God is often an important part of recovery from trauma; that is, the refining and rethinking of one's personal spiritual and religious convictions often play a major role. This is especially pertinent when one has been abused by a member of the clergy or traumatized by domestic abuse in a household supposedly dedicated to honoring the Divine. These issues may arise when a therapist is treating members of ethnic minorities, where the questioning of traditional values is especially problematic. In contemporary society, trauma is everywhere. Civilian deaths in recent wars have outnumbered those of combatants. Girls and women are mutilated or killed for alleged religious transgressions. Ethnic and tribal rivalries trigger random murders, and innocent people are caught in the cross-fire of interminable drug wars or territorial disputes. It is naïve to think that an infusion of humanistic psychology could stop the escalation of trauma, but at least this goal could be put on the agenda of humanistic and existential psychologists and the groups with which they have influence. DEVELOPING POST-TRAUMATIC STRENGTHS Psychotherapy has addressed the sequelae of trauma since its beginning. For decades, research studies had failed to demonstrate its effectiveness appropriately. However, more recent data not only support the proposal that psychotherapy works; a comparison of half a dozen interventions for U.S. combat veterans with PTSD found that each bona fide treatment alleviated suffering, and in comparable proportion. Furthermore, medication without therapy was less effective than therapy without medication. When an anti-depressant was used without therapy, its effect upon patients varied little from that upon those given only a placebo (Benish, Imel, & Wampold, 2008). Humanistic and existential psychotherapies were not among the treatments evaluated for a very simple reason: not enough data were available for comparisons to be made. As a result, these psychotherapies are out of the loop when funding is available to study treatments for PTSD. Sadly, humanistic psychotherapy is not the only intervention that has failed to receive attention from funding agencies; so, too, have rational emotive behavior therapy, expressive arts therapy, and Reproduced with permission of The Licensor through PLSclear / Routledge