When grief becomes painfully preoccupying and protracted, the problem often arises at the intersection of the death and the relationship it interrupted. Drawing on attachment-informed and Two-Track models of bereavement, we will begin by considering grieving as a process of reconstructing rather than relinquishing our bonds with those who have died, and the complicating circumstances that can interfere with this natural process. We then turn to a close analysis of a single session of therapy that releases an adult daughter from an anguishing grief that has persisted unchanged for many years, and that has insinuated itself into her life with intimate others. We begin this work by attending closely to "quality terms" in the client's narrative that poignantly convey the character of her connection with her mother, that symbolically signal the devastation caused by her death, and that function as harbingers of a more hopeful reconstructed relationship
Case Discussion 01 Panel w/ Bruno Bettelheim, PhD, Murray Bowen, MD, Mary M. Goulding, MSW, and Thomas S. Szasz, MD. Moderated by William R. McLeod, MD.
Case Discussion Panel 02 featuring James F. Masterson, MD, Salvador Minuchin, MD, Zerka Moreno, and Paul Watzlawick, PhD. Moderated by Ann Wright-Edwards, MS.
Case Discussion Panel 05 featuring Robert L Goulding, MD, Arnold A Lazarus, PhD, Cloe Madanes, and Miriam Polster, PhD.
Moderated by Stuart M Gould, Jr, MD.