pad beside them for creating such a list will be rewarded. What is the book's underlining "theology"? Kornfeld sees God active already, changing lives. "God heals, we co-operate." She sees pastors, rabbis, and other clergy, as well as lay caregivers, constructingsolutions together, assuredthat Godis already at work in the midst of our changing lives. She believes that our work can feed our own souls, particularly as we stay connected to our own experience. In a section on "listening as an act of prayer" the book gives valuable advice on both listening and praying. One missing element for this reviewer (who now, after 20 years in parish leadership, ministers as a hospital chaplain, an institution somewhat removed from my faith community) is some discussion of how the community dimension of care from faith groups, outlined so well throughout, can be utilized in the care of people in public institutions. Perhaps a second edition of this outstanding manual can include an appendix on applying the community dimension of care through chaplaincy in public institutions. If the present material is any indication, such an appendix would make a book already extremely helpful for chaplains even more valuable. This reviewer has spent twenty years in parish ministry leadership. Not once, as I read this volume, did I find myself thinking, Shedoesn'tknow whatI've had to dealwith. Kornfeld displays a fine grasp of clinical literature, pastoral work, and a keen grasp of the dynamics of life in local faith communities. She has more than succeeded in providing a useful handbook for clergy and lay leaders and caregivers in faith communities. I wish I had read a book like this twenty-five years ago! I expect to use it again and again over the next twenty-five years.
it did not include elders' loss of family and home. Thinking of "later years" of elders, I anticipated that he would address the problem of the isolation of elders "with their own kind," the transience that often leaves elders living at a distance from their children and grandchildren, and the trauma of giving up the family home. This chapter is about the grown child leaving home and the loss that both parents and children experience at such a juncture. For the elderly, the loss of home has a very different meaning. (Sullender gets to elder loss of home in discussing his final loss, independence.) Large sections of this book are more about "empty nest" than "later life," leading me to believe that the book might more accurately be entitled "losses in the middle years and in later life." Sullender writes about a middle to upper income population, generalizing that in later life people, apparently including himself, probably "have more money available now than ever before in our lives." I think, for example, of the elders served by Community Ministries of Rockville (Maryland) who have only their social security income, and minimal or no savings. Also, Sullender assumes that everyone has two known parents, not true in many deprived areas of our society, nor for persons who choose to raise a child alone. The poor as well as persons who have not had good enough parenting, and people living in non-traditional families might have a hard time identifying with the book. Sullender basically writes about and for the economically comfortable, heterosexual two-parent family with children. Apart from these limitations, Losses in Later Life is a well-written, insightful, and useful book for many adults of all ages, particularly those who seek to remain faithful to their religious beliefs and to further develop their spiritual lives unto the end. It is equally helpful to persons who walk with their beloved elders through their final years.
Offers a psychodiagnostic interpretation of King David's later Jerusalem reign which indicates criteria exceedingly those required for a Major Depressive Disorder as listed in the DSM-IV. Opines that whatever other political, polemical, or sociological constructs may be applied to these biblical passages, this interpretative axis supports a scientifically credible account of Yahweh's covenant faithfulness despite David's incapacitating depression.
Wolf Wolfensberger: scholar, does not hesitate to dramatically state change agent, and iconoclast his views. In the 1970s, he advocated Hank Bersani two constructs which have shaped disability services to the present day *** J of Religion, Disability and the principle of normalization, and the Health (2001) 4(2/3) pp.1-9 construct of Citizen Advocacy. "Who is this Wolf Although normalization had its roots in Wolfensberger, and why are we Scandinavia, it was Wolfsenberger in devoting an entire publication to his his 1972 paper "The principle of work?" With this rhetorical question, normalization in human services" who Bersani introduces us to the work and brought the concept to the U.S. and thought of one of the most who has successfully advocated for its controversial and challenging figures in acceptance. The titles of the papers the field of mental retardation in the included in the issue are: past quarter century. Bersani and the "The prophetic voice and presence of other contributors to this volume mentally retarded people in the world ~escribe him as having great today;" "An attempt toward a theology importance for stimulating debate and of social integration of devalued! discussion about religion, disability and handicapped people;" "An attempt to health. gain a better understanding from a This volume contains seven of Christian perspective of what "mental Wolfensberger's papers which present re~dation': is;" "~ow we carry the his religious and spiritual viewpoints on mlms~ with handicapped persons to disability. Aside from their intrinsic ~e pansh level;" "The most urgent importance they are difficult to locate. IS~Ues faci~g us as Christians concerned (Some exist only in mimeograph form.) ~th handlca~ped persons today;" Dennis Schurter, a chaplain in the The good hfe for mental retarded mental retardation field; Eric Pridmore, pe~o~s;" and "The ~ormati~e lack of a graduate student in religion and Christian. commumty m local disability; and Sandra Friedman a congregations as the central obstacle to leading physician in the field then offer a proper relationship with needy chapter-length comments about the members." man's impact on their work and on the "Let's get into character": a field as a whole, and Wolfensberger psychology of conversion in completes the volume with his Quentin Tarantino's Pulp responses to the three respondents. Fiction
tant section on grief. They sensitively represent the complex interplay between the reliving of past victimization and, through projection, the subtle potential for re-victimizing others. There is just one caution to be raised in this section pertaining to couples' therapy. The battered women's movement has long cautioned against couples' therapy where there is ongoing violence. Victims often cannot safely share deep experiences without risking retaliation. Therapists do need tools to address intense, chaotic couples' dynamics. At the same time, the authors' depth-oriented couples' method needs stronger safeguards against recurrence of violence, together with a more adequate analysis of power in intimate relationships, and how patriarchal privilege continues to reinforce violence against women. In Part III in general, "evil" rather fades from the picture, and the focus shifts mainly to clinical treatment of trauma. Parts II and III might both be strengthened by a more thorough integration of the clinical theory with explicitly religious language about God, sin, and theodicy (the authors' starting point in Part I). Part IV, then, which calls for a prophetic stance, represents a welcome return of theological language. For this reader, this was the most exciting and integrative section of the book. The authors argue against a splitting of prophetic response from pastoral care, and frame pastoral counseling itself as a form of cultural critique. They argue for an end in teaching and practice to a view of pastoral care and counseling as standing in opposition to social and political critique, and call for an integration of the two into a creative, holistic response to evil in all its guises. The strength of the book, its groundedness in clients' own experiences of evil and trauma, also in one way became its main weakness. In pastoral counseling, as in the counseling field in general, the vast majority of both counselors and clients are middle-class and white. Available forms of counseling have tended, in turn, to be captivated by medical and managed care models that have embedded racial and class privilege and cultural assumptions. By drawing on their own clinical experience with abuse survivors, the authors' account of evil and trauma stays experiencenear to their own clients' stories, but there is no explicit mention of race, class, sexual orientation, or social oppression. The authors' discussion of evil in Part I actually offered, without naming racism as such, a compelling description of the damages inflicted not only by sexual abuse but by racism and other systemic evils. Because the book is not intended solely as a book on sexual or domestic violence, it would have been enriched by more multi-cultural case examples (perhaps drawing from other practitioners working in different contexts), and by explicit references, both theoretical and case-related, to the racism, classism, heterosexism, and other forms of oppression that also deeply wound and dehumanize both selves and souls. In summary, although the book in some ways remains embedded in certain social, class, and clinical assumptions common in much pastoral psychotherapy practice today, it is a brave attempt to bring a serious theological understanding of evil into dialogue with the treatment of trauma. The authors have made an important effort to heal the split between the therapeutic and the prophetic in pastoral care and counseling. Trauma and Evil represents a useful resource for all those who take both trauma and evil seriously in our pastoral work today.
