The Restorative Nature of Ongoing Connections with the Deceased: Exploring Presence Within Absence
The Restorative Nature of Ongoing Connections with the Deceased is a guide to stimulating thought and discussion about ongoing attachments between bereaved individuals and their deceased loved ones.
Chapters promote broad, inclusive training and dialogue for working with clients who establish and/or maintain a restorative connection with their deceased loved one as well as those who find aspects of such connections to be psychologically or spiritually problematic or troublesome.
Bereavement professionals will come away from this book with a better understanding and a deeper skillset for helping clients to develop continuing bonds.
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Laurie A. Burke, PhD, is a licensed clinical psychologist who specializes in traumatic loss, complicated grief, and spiritual crisis following loss. She developed the Inventory of Complicated Spiritual Grief 2.0.
Edward (Ted) Rynearson, MD, is a clinical psychiatrist and researcher in Seattle, Washington, and author of two books, Retelling Violent Death and Violent Death: Resilience and Intervention Beyond the Crisis.
"Connecting to the presence within absence of the deceased can be the saving grace for the bereaved, and yet a comprehensive text on this critical topic has been lacking. Brimming with theoretical and clinical wisdom, this book offers a unique and powerful combination of sociocultural, religious, and intrapsychic perspectives to broaden our understanding of the value of connecting to the presence of the deceased and how it may be therapeutically cultivated to console grievers." -- Wendy Lichtenthal, PhD, assistant attending psychologist and director of the Bereavement Clinic at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center Evelyn H. Lauder Breast Center
"This book is destined to become a landmark contribution to the field of thanatology. Human beings have always found ways to stay connected to their deceased loved ones--what Burke and Rynearson term 'presence within absence, ' and what others have called maintaining continuing bonds and after-death communications. The Restorative Nature of Ongoing Connections with the Deceased: Exploring Presence within Absence offers us a contemporary view of this enduring human phenomenon. It covers perspectives from all the major world religions, and it provides in-depth discussions of the clinical and research implications of the presence-within-absence phenomenon. I believe that this volume is on the cutting-edge of an important future direction in thanatology. As such, it ought to be read by anyone interested in role of the presence-within-absence experience in the healing process of grief recovery." -- John R. Jordan, PhD, clinical psychologist in private practice in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, and coauthor of Attachment-Informed Grief Therapy: The Clinician's Guide to Foundations and Applications
