Main description:

In Healing after Parent Loss in Childhood and Adolescence: Therapeutic Interventions and Theoretical Considerations, experts explore the varied, often complex, and always tragic circumstances under which young people face losing a parent. Profound grief and feelings of powerlessness may accompany loss of a parent at any age, but distinctly so when such loss is experienced during formative years. Whenever these individuals seek help, therapists must be psychically prepared to enter into arenas of trauma, bereavement, and mourning. The children, teens, and adults presented are diverse in age, culture/ethnicity, and socioeconomic status. A diverse group of contributors showcase a wide range of effective approaches-from traditionally structured short- and long-term psychotherapies and psychoanalysis, to psycho-educational, supportive, and preventive interventions.

The writers in this volume do not shy away from tough matters such as urban violence, AIDS, and war; they address concerns practicing clinicians face, such as when to work with children, adolescents, and adults individually, and when and how to involve their surviving parents and families. Included in this book are issues related to the self-care and professional development needs of therapists who take on this difficult but essential work, including peer support and supervision.

This volume is likely to spark important re-examinations across all fields of mental health practice. It will equip and empower clinicians of all kinds who undertake work with those who are grieving. Healing after Parent Loss in Childhood and Adolescence promises to be a vital and stimulating read for supervisors, teachers, and trainers of child, adolescent, and family clinicians.

Contents:

Foreword
Nancy McWilliams

Part I: Overview
1: Loss of a Parent During Childhood and Adolescence: A Prismatic Look at the Literature
K. Mark Sossin, Yelena Bromberg, & Diana Haddad

Part II: Therapy in the Office with Children and Their Caregivers
2: "Do You Know Anyone Who is Dead?" A Four Year Old Boy Comes to Understand the Unexpected Loss of His Father in the Context of Culture
Luz Towns-Miranda
3. Walking in Their Shoes: Therapeutic Journeys with Young Girls who Lost Mothers
JoAnn Ponder
4: "My Daddy is a Star in the Sky": Understanding and Treating Traumatic Grief in Early Childhood
Chandra Ghosh Ippen, Alicia F. Lieberman, & Joy D. Osofsky

Part III: Therapy in the Office with Adolescents
5: A Terrible Thing Happened on the Way to Becoming a Girl: Transgender Trauma, Parental Loss, and Recovery
Diane Ehrensaft
6: Mourning Childhood Loss in Adolescence: An Indirect Approach to Feelings
Daniel Gensler
7: Revisiting, Repairing and Restoring: The Developmental Journey of a Bereaved Adolescent
Norka T. Malberg

Part IV: Therapy in the Office with Emerging and Older Adults after Earlier Loss of a Parent
8: All You Need is Love: Primary Paternal Preoccupation
Seth Aronson
9. Death and a Daughter's Diary
Billie Ann Pivnick
10. Mourning a Ghost: A Challenge for Holocaust Child Survivors
Eva Fogelman

Part V: Innovative Applications in Groups, Consultations and Court Assessments
11. When the Context Shifts: A Child Therapist Helping Children in Forensic Systems Who Have Lost a Parent
Richard Ruth
12. Maintaining Hope in the Face of Despair: The Transference-Countertransference Matrix in Treating Adolescents Coping with Traumatic Parental Losses
Etty Cohen
13. Take Me to the Moon and Wait: A Model for Accompanying Families with Young Children Through Parental Illness, Death and Mourning
Ariane Schwab Hug and Daniel S. Schechter
14. Father Quest and Linking Objects: A Story of the
American World War II Orphans Network (AWON)
and Palestinian Orphans
Vamik D. Volkan
15. Death of a Father on September 11, 2001:
Video-Informed Consultations
K. Mark Sossin, Phyllis Cohen, & Beatrice Beebe

About the Editors and Contributors
Index