Biography
Edward Tick, PhD is a nonfiction writer and poet. He is a transformational healer, holistic psychotherapist, educator, consultant and international journey guide.
Dr. Tick has been working to heal the invisible wounds of war and violent trauma for over forty years. He is honored for his groundbreaking work in the spiritual, holistic, and community-based healing of veterans and other survivors of severe violence who suffer Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and moral injury. He has published breakthrough books in this field, including the award-winning War and the Soul. His work introduced the ancient concept of soul wounding and how to heal it to our modern military, veteran and trauma studies worlds.
Dr. Tick is an internationally recognized educator, author and expert on the military, veterans, PTSD, Viet Nam, and the psychology, spirituality and history of global trauma, warrior traditions, and military-related issues. For four decades he has conducted trainings, retreats and workshops across the country and overseas. He has trained staff, taught and worked with wounded warriors at major Department of Defense and Veteran Administration facilities and at colleges, universities, hospitals, health care and community centers across the country and overseas. Defense Dept. and VA facilities use his pioneering work and he has served as the US military's subject matter expert trainer on PTSD and Moral Injury for the past decade. Ed cofounded the nonprofit Soldier's Heart, Inc. with his partner Kate Dahlstedt and for 13 years served as its director from their national offices in Troy, New York. He now consilts internationally on these issues.
In addition to War and the Soul Ed is the author of the nonfiction books Sacred Mountain, The Practice of Dream Healing, Wild Beasts and Wandering Souls, and Warrior's Return, the poetry collections The Bull Awakening and The Golden Tortoise, the audio set Restoring the Warrior's Soul, much poetry, and over 200 scholarly, professional and popular book chapters, essays and articles in psychology, trauma studies, poetry, literature, philosophy, mythology, humanistic, classical and Vietnamese studies. He was editor of Voices: The Art and Science of Psychotherapy, the Frontiers of Psychotherapy book series, and poetry editor for Outpost and other little magazines.
Ed's newest books include a 20-year poetry collection documenting his healing journeys in Viet Nam, Coming Home in Viet Nam (Tia Chucha Press, 2021) and Soul Medicine: Healing Through Dreams, Visions, Oracles and Pilgrimages, an in-depth exploration of the ancient Greek healing traditions (Inner Traditions, 2022).
An international journey guide, since 2000 Ed has led annual reconciliation and healing journeys to Viet Nam. There he facilitates meetings, ceremonies and rituals, philanthropy, encounters with counterparts, poetry exchanges, and other practices that bring forgiveness, understanding, mutual honor, and deep and lasting healing to veterans and civilians from both countries and all factions of the old war.
Ed also conducts original and groundbreaking work in the Ancient Greek tradition. Since 1995 he has led more than twenty pilgrimages to Greece, teaching ancient traditions and the use of myth, poetry, tragedy, literature and philosophy for deep soul exploration. His book The Practice of Dream Healing is a classic in depth psychology, offering the most comprehensive modern account of ancient Asklepian dream healing practices and the Western origins of medicine and psychotherapy, and their applications to holistic healing today.
Ed brings the lessons of healing from severe trauma from survivors directly impacted to the general public – all of us -- experiencing crippling dimensions of global trauma on a daily basis today.
Ed affirms that poetry is the language of the soul. He has published poetry collections on both Viet Nam and Greece, conducts poetry and literature readings and exchanges in both countries and has translated their poetry. He uses poetry extensively in healing and international reconciliation practices and for exploration of the hidden dimensions of psyche and culture.
Ed has been distinguished, visiting and adjunct faculty at many colleges, universities and advanced educational centers, including U.S. Military training facilities, Pacifica Graduate School, National Hospice Assoc. and Jung Societies, and presently at Southern Connecticut State Univ.
Ed's books have been translated into Greek, Vietnamese, Bulgarian and Italian, and additional poetry and prose into Japanese and French. He has new forthcoming translations in progress in Ukrainian, Russian, Greek and more.
He won the Willis Barnstone Translation Award, 2019, Evansville Review, Univ of Evansville, for his translation of modern Greek poetry. Ed has also co-translated and published poetry from Viet Nam with Tran Dinh Song in several books and literary journals.
Ed's deepest devotion is to the unfolding and restoration of soul as a meaningful and living concept in our personal and collective lives. Only by healing the sacred core of life can we transform our wounded world and ourselves. Poetry and writing are among the greatest tools we have for this sacred work.