Working with Continuing Bonds in Grief Therapy by Robert A Neimeyer

Working with Continuing Bonds in Grief Therapy by Robert A Neimeyer

Grief counseling and therapy have been revolutionized by the recognition that adaptive grieving commonly involves retaining bonds with the deceased rather than relinquishing them, but guidelines for how to integrate this shift into professional practice have been scarce. In this groundbreaking volume, leading bereavement scholars Robert Neimeyer and Edith Steffen provide a rich trove of therapeutic procedures to help grieving clients preserve valued relationships with the dead and address lingering issues with them.

With astute attention to clinical and cultural contexts, specific instructions for a great range of approaches, numerous practice vignettes, and transcripts of actual sessions, Working with Continuing Bonds in Grief Therapy is required reading for all professionals who support the bereaved in living through loss while reaffirming or realigning bonds with their loved ones.

"DrsNeimeyer and Steffen, in addition to being celebrated experts in the phenomenology, empirical research, and intervention for complex forms of grief, are incisive and engaging writers. Their book is a clarification of the restorative potential of the continuing bond with the deceased—as a ‘presence within absence’ and ally in grief therapy. A comprehensive series of chapters describe specific novel approaches and techniques for helping clients consolidate more secure bonds with the dead, highlighted by vivid case studies, in a volume that will be a valuable reference for the licensed clinician, counselor or general reader."

Ted Rynearson, MD, co-editor of The Restorative Nature of Ongoing Connections to the Deceased and emeritus clinical professor of psychiatry, University of Washington

"This book is a must have for any professional supporting grieving people or conducting research in grief, bereavement, and mourning. Neimeyer and Steffen shed light on the historical and cultural contexts of continuing bonds, creating a framework for chapters that focus on how we can work with the bereaved in their ongoing relationship with the person close to them who has died. Ways of relationally engaging are brought to life through case examples, poignantly and compassionately demonstrating the power of working restoratively with continuing bonds."

Andy Langford, clinical director, Cruse Bereavement Support, UK

"Working therapeutically with the emotional bonds that link the bereaved to the deceased is a key element in facilitating successful intervention following interpersonal loss. Neimeyer and Steffen provide a most readable, systematic, nuanced and clinically relevant exposition of this topic. Theory and case material come alive in the detailed clinical examples that unfold to touch and instruct both heart and mind. This is a book to read and reread."

Simon Shimshon Rubin, PhD, director of the Laboratory for the Study of Loss, Bereavement, and Human Resilience, University of Haifa, and co-author of Working with the Bereaved

Robert A. Neimeyer, PhD, directs the Portland Institute for Loss and Transition, actively practices as a trainer and consultant, and has published extensively on grieving as a meaning-making process.

Edith Maria Steffen, PsychD, is an honorary associate professor in counselling psychology at the University of Plymouth and senior counselling psychologist in the UK’s National Health Service. She also maintains a private practice in Surrey, UK.