Psychotherapy And The Widowed Patient

Coming at a time of renewed interest in the developmental changes of the life cycle, Psychotherapy and the Widowed Patient is a rich resource that examines the impact of a spouse's death on an individual's mental health. Psychiatrists and psychoanalysts address a wide range of issues concerning loss, grief, and bereavement, and provide practical and creative approaches for both widowed persons and the helping professionals charged with treating their grief. Chapters in this compassionate volume discuss the characteristics of individuals who are more likely to seek professional help in coping with grief, widowhood as a time of growth and development, the value of openness instead of denial in dealing with death, the grieving process in young widowed spouses, the similarities of widowhood to separation and divorce, the role of dependency in how well widowed patients develop emotionally, and the role of loyalty in the process of grief. The more clinical chapters examine strategies for carrying out experiential psychotherapy with widowed patients, rational-emotive therapy, grief therapy, the effects of new perspectives on spousal bereavement on clinical practice, and aspects of bereavement response to loss, with a timeframe for viewing psychotherapeutic intervention. A review of the psychological literature regarding widowhood completes this comprehensive new book.

In "Widower: When Men are Left Alone", a journalist and a social worker explore the grief process as men experience it. The book contains the oral histories of twenty men, ranging in age from 30 to 94, who have lost their wives to a range of causes including cancer, alcohol, murder, and suicide. Taken together, the stories guide the reader through the journey of widowhood, from the raw despair of the early weeks to the resolved perspective thirteen years later, offered by the only true authority on the subject - the men who have survived it.

Working with widowers can be one of the most challenging parts of a therapist’s career. Despite the need for better research and professional guidance, therapists have often been left alone to confront a group struggling with high rates of suicide, mortality, physical health problems, and depression. Counseling Widowers builds from the latest developments in grief research and men’s studies to bridge the gap between counseling practice and the needs of bereaved men. In these pages, therapists will find tools for adjusting their clinical strategies to work more effectively with these men. Through a more empathic understanding of widowers, therapists can help them build from their strengths as they face the loss of their partner.

Working with widowers can be one of the most challenging parts of a therapist’s career. Despite the need for better research and professional guidance, therapists have often been left alone to confront a group struggling with high rates of suicide, mortality, physical health problems, and depression. Counseling Widowers builds from the latest developments in grief research and men’s studies to bridge the gap between counseling practice and the needs of bereaved men. In these pages, therapists will find tools for adjusting their clinical strategies to work more effectively with these men. Through a more empathic understanding of widowers, therapists can help them build from their strengths as they face the loss of their partner.

Leading therapists illustrate how they help clients cope with the many facets of the grieving process in this compassionate book. They clarify many aspects of how we can all suffer grief and how grief is a compendium of rage, guilt, self-accusation, and other negative emotions. The experts explore the grieving process as it relates to persons suffering from a great loss, as well as to dying patients, children of alcoholics, adult incest survivors, Vietnam veterans, and elders dealing with retirement and chronic physical disabilities.

Here is an important new book focusing on the contribution of the therapist's love and empathy to the therapeutic process. Technique without dedication, discipline, and understanding will rarely benefit patients nor help resolve their conflicts. Psychoanalytic Technique demonstrates how the therapist's countertransference feelings, anxieties, wishes, and superego admonitions shape his or her therapeutic interventions.

Help your clients successfully integrate the angel and the rebel! Saints and Rogues: Conflicts and Convergence in Psychotherapy is a unique look at two extremes of human behavior and thought—and how they meet within the psychotherapy experience. In this extensive resource, you will gain a greater understanding of human potential by exploring personalities where the line between conformity and divergence has been blurred. This book will help psychotherapists, pastoral and marriage and family counselors, and medical/nursing service providers guide patients and clients in turning negative actions and decisions into positive ones. In Saints and Rogues, you will find: an assessment of the life of Harry Stack Sullivan (1892-1949)— called “rogue therapist” by his peers; today a hero for his influence on psychotherapy practice bullying in school—the creation of a prevention program used at the K-5 level designed to appeal to the empathy of the children who are bullied as well as the perpetrators an examination of historical, sociological, and psychoanalytic research about Italian Americans stereotyped as rogues during the twentieth century and in the media today interviews with individuals self-identified as “third gender” who live as neither men nor women—and their frequent encounters with spirituality and much more! Saints and Rogues: Conflicts and Convergence in Psychotherapy reevaluates the ethical ramifications of dual/duel relationships, revealing how a roguish character may be seen as saintly and vice versa. This book emphasizes the importance of seeing and treating one another with the same consideration as we would give ourselves. If knowledge is power, the reader—therapist and layperson alike—will find strength in these pages to face their home, work, or school lives with more confidence and pride.

The recently widowed experience many complex problems, and an understanding of their needs and the kinds of difficulties they encounter is essential if appropriate services and help are to be mobilized. It is the old who are most likely to be widowed, and they may face this crisis at a time when they may also be adjusting to ill health and increasing infirmity, and to retirement, with its problems of role identification and adaptation to an increase in leisure and a decrease in wealth. Most will have to learn to live alone, or to uproot themselves from their home and adjust to life with relatives. Often, the elderly person will have been involved in caring for their spouse during his or her terminal illness; widowhood will mean that they have lost their main occupation. For some, who are themselves disabled, widowhood may mean that they have lost the person who cared for them, so that there is an immediate crisis as alternative sources of care need to be found. These problems have to be faced in a situation often complicated by the anxiety, loneliness, apathy, and bewilderment of bereavement. Originally published in 1982, Life After A Death presents the results of a study of the experiences and attitudes of over 350 elderly widowed men and women, their general practitioners, and their relatives, friends, and neighbours, and considers the implications of the help the widowed received, or failed to receive, from those to whom it was most likely that they would turn for support. The authors’ identification and description of the emotional and practical day-to-day needs of the widowed, and their recommendations about the potential role of the general practitioner and voluntary and social services, should be considered by all those concerned to alleviate the difficulties of the widowed, and to help them to live a better ‘life after a death’.