How is an individual to lead a comfortable, productive existence when he or she was never taught the skills necessary for effective living? Adult survivors of child abuse often face this dilemma. Instead of being nurtured as children and taught life-skills by their caregivers, child abuse survivors were subjected to a daily regimen of coercive control, contempt, rejection and emotional unresponsiveness. It is not surprising, therefore, that many survivors encounter difficulty adjusting from this type of damaging childhood atmosphere to one in which they have autonomy. This book addresses the...

List of Tables. List of Figures. Series Editor's Foreword. Preface. Prologue. Acknowledgements. What It Means to Be a Parent After a Child Had Died. The "Mothers Now Childless" Study: Research Design and Findings. When a Child Dies, Does Grieving Ever End? One Death - A Thousand Strands of Pain: Finding the Meaning of Suffering. Bereaved Parents' Search for Understanding: The Paradox of Healing. Confronting a Spiritual Crisis: Where is God When Bad Things Happen? Confronting an Existential Crisis: Can Life Have Purpose Again? Deciding to Survive: Reaching Bottom - Climbing Up. Remembering...

In the face of trauma, our assumptive world - the world experienced as normal or predictable - is seriously disrupted. This disruption, this loss of our assumptive world functions as a metaphor for traumatic loss in this volume, providing extraordinary insight into the psychology of trauma, loss and change. Loss of the Assumptive World: A Theory of Traumatic Loss builds on Ronnie Janoff-Bulman's new psychology of trauma and Colin Murray Parkes' principle of psychosocial change. It is a concept that allows for the close examination of the psychological disturbance that takes place in the wake...