The Therapist in Mourning

Therapists have long felt required to keep their own emotional wounds and pain hidden from their patients. As finite human beings we are all subject to the traumas of death and loss, and I applaud this volume for bringing our existential vulnerabilities into a professional dialogue. Our patients can only benefit from this open and gripping acknowledgment of our existential kinship in the same darkness. -- Robert Stolorow, Institute of Contemporary Psychoanalysis, Los Angeles For therapists whose life work is caring for others, this book is an essential read. Theoretically sophisticated, insightful, and moving, the contributors address experiences of loss in therapy that have barely garnered passing consideration. By drawing our attention to the dynamics of grief and loss in the clinical situation, the authors have also, with great poignancy, underscored the beauty and meaning of therapeutic relationships. -- Brian Rasmussen, University of British Columbia, Okanagan Rarely does one come across a book that combines good writing, good thinking, and good feeling. Well, here is that book. Adelman and Malawista's assemblage of reports and reflections on the loss of family members, patients, therapists, and institutions enhances our capacity for empathy and attunement with individuals facing such calamities. Their book mobilizes serious contemplation about human relationships that are simultaneously transient and everlasting. A bit of sadness follows, yet such 'good' sadness leads to psychic growth, maturity, and wisdom. -- Salman Akhtar, Jefferson Medical College In this remarkable volume, psychoanalysts and psychoanalytic psychotherapists explore their reactions to their encounter with death and loss: with patients' unexpected death, with their own life-threatening illnesses and personal mourning processes affecting their work, and with their philosophical posture to the challenge of death in health and illness. In the process, the authors reexamine critically psychoanalytic literature on depression and mourning and reveal their personal ways of dealing with experiences of death and mourning. A thought-provoking and moving work that will help mental-health professionals deepen their clinical expertise in dealing with this unavoidable aspect of human experience. -- Otto F. Kernberg, PhD, Weill Medical College, Cornell University This book makes a valuable contribution to a contemporary perspective on the analyst's experience within the therapeutic situation. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association The Therapist in Mourning is a thoughtful examination of grief in the psychotherapeutic relationship. Omega