Healing Pain: Attachment, Loss and Grief Therapy

Feelings of loss, resulting in grief, are triggered by many situations besides the death of a loved one - for example, divorce, loss of health through accident or serious illness such as cancer or AIDS, or the birth of a handicapped child. "Healing Pain" investigates why the process of grief can be such a dramatic turning-point for those who undergo it, and why they can never remain as they were before. It is based on ten years of intensive work with people affected by, or at risk from, both normal and pathological grief. Nini Leick and Marianne Davidsen-Nielsen describe the original methods of treatment they have developed to help people suffering complex losses find the healing power inherent in healthy grief. Starting with a comprehensive account of the grief process and an outline of the classical models, they give advice on how to work with normal and pathological grief in individual or group settings. The treatment methods described can be used and adapted by all professionals who work with grief, helping them to identify people threatened by pathological grief and suggesting how to find out precisely where in the grief process the mourner may be stuck.