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This volume is a collection of papers by mental health professionals, both psychotherapists and psychoanalysts, on the topic of loss and mourning in the therapist's life and mind. The book is structured in four parts. The first part deals with “The Therapist's Experience of Loss” and is composed of three chapters. The second part, containing four chapters, is titled “When a Patient Dies.” Part III, “At the Crossroads of the Therapist's Personal and Professional Worlds,” has four chapters, as does the fourth and last part of the book, “When Disaster Strikes a Community.”
One of the book's co-editors, Kerry L. Malawista, coauthored the first chapter, while her co-editor, Anne J. Adelman, wrote a chapter about mourning the death of a patient. She also wrote the book's preface. In addition, the introduction to the book and a brief conclusion were authored by the two co-editors.
Adelman and Malawista have compiled a volume that I believe has been desperately needed by the psychoanalytic community on a topic that is often minimized: the therapist's/analyst's mourning. In their introduction, they write:
When someone we love dies, such rituals—the funeral, the wake, family visits, mourners' prayers—serve as scaffolding for our grief. Amid the circle of grievers, these funeral rituals provide a way to contain and temper overwhelming feelings of loss and grief … and to help the mourner feel held, supported, and able to put words to powerful and destabilizing emotions. [pp. 3-4]