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Chronic Sorrow

A Living Loss

• By Susan Roos

• Price: $28.95 $26.06
• Binding: Paperback
• Pages: 208
• Published by: Routledge
• Publication Date: 18th January 2002
• ISBN: 978-1-58391-321-5

About the Book

Grief and loss are burgeoning concerns for professional disciplines such as nursing, social work, family therapy, psychology, psychiatry, law, religion and medicine. Although understanding has increased in virtually all other areas of grief and loss, chronic sorrow has received scant attention. Chronic sorrow is a natural grief reaction to losses that are not final, but continue to be present in the life of the griever. This book views chronic sorrow in a life-span perspective, and reveals the effect on the griever and the people close to them.

This book fills a void in the literature; and attempts to develop a comprehensive analysis of chronic sorrow that will secure its position within the field of grief and loss.

Reviews

"Susan Roos has written a comprehensive and important book regarding the little understood phenomenon of chronic sorrow. She has compiled reams of research and her own observations as a therapist into a detailed, analytical, pioneering work. Her experiences as a mother of two developmentally disabled daughters, one who died at the age of 3, seem to be the foundation and the cement for this work. Roos has crafted a volume that needs to be read by clinicians and medical professionals. ppIt is my hope that the author has plans to write another book geared specifically toward parents and caretakers experiencing other-loss. This book is appropriate for professionals...Undoubtedly, further research will be spurred by Roos's important addition to the field of grief and the concept of chronic sorrow. She has made an immense contribution to those experiencing self-loss and other loss, from which many will benefit." -- Debra Thompson, Death Studies, April 2003

Table of Contents

Preface. Acknowledgments. Foreward. Part I: Introduction. Historical Overview. Chronic Sorrow as a Paradigm Shift. Part II: What is Chronic Sorrow. Proposed Definition. Comparisons and Distinctions. Clinical Significance. Extent of Sorrow of Chronic Sorrow. Proposed Model of Chronic Sorrow. Part III: Interpreting the Loss. Subjectivity of the Loss. Gender Differences. Self-Loss and Other-Loss. Real Loss and Loss of Fantasies. Part IV: Living with Chronic Sorrow. Personal Accounts. Fictionalized Works. Critical Stress Points. Victimization Anxiety. Author's Observations. Part V: Families, Loss, and Chronic Sorrow. The Family Life Cycle. Family Stress and Loss. Family Coping and Adaptation. Siblings. Depleted Caregivers. Part VI: Existential Issues. Disillusionment. Alonenes. Vulnerability. Inequity. Insignificance. Past Temporal Orientation. Mortality. Part VII: Complicating Factors. Stress. Guilt. Identity. Symbiotic Enmeshment. Disordered Intimacy and Attachment. Anger. Depression. Loss Spirals. Part VIII: Professional Support and Treatment. Basic Assumptions. Desirable Professional / Therapist Attribtues. Suggested Goals and Objectives. Hazards and Pitfalls.Part IX: Implications and Directions for Research. Reinterpretation of Existing Studies. Independent Variables. Dependent Variables. Part X: Trends. Professional Education. Shift Toward Depathologizing of Grief. Psychotherapy. Increasing Prevalence of Chronic Sorrow. Epilogue. References. Index.

About the Author(s)

Susan Roos, Ph.D., is a psychotherapist who has been in private practice for over twenty years. She is a licensed social worker, a board certifed diplomate and a Gestalt therapist.

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