AIDS has humbled us. Thus observes editor Mark Blechner in introducing readers to this powerful collection of essays on psychodynamic approaches to AIDS. It is the disease, Blechner tells us, that "has forced us to rethink our relation to sickness and health, mortality, sexuality, drug use, and what we consider valuable in life." In the chapters that follow, experienced clinicians shatter myths about the inapplicability of psychoanalysis to work with AIDS patients. In addition to setting forth general principles involved in working with patients with serious illness, Hope and Mortality explores the wide range of therapeutic issues that have arisen in the wake of AIDS. Among the topics of individual chapters: working with children whose parents have AIDS; working with AIDS patients in an inner-city hospital; disability, dementia, and other realities of late-stage AIDS; treating someone who becomes HIV-positive while in therapy; leading a support group for gay men with AIDS; confronting fears of HIV in the "worried well"; and coming out of the closet as a heterosexual while running a bereavement group for gay men. Most poignant of all are chapters in which therapists examine how they have been transformed by treating people with AIDS. Here contributors candidly discuss how their attitudes toward death have shaped, and in turn been shaped by, their clinical work. They tell of recovering near-death memories, of questioning their reliance on traditional medicine, and of feeling the numbing effects of multiple loss with their patients. The AIDS epidemic has become so widespread that every clinician must learn about the disease and the psychological issues it raises. Hope and Mortality provides an illuminating exploration of these issues and raises profound questions about the overall aims of psychotherapy. It will instruct and challenge all mental health professionals, and provide hope and enlightenment to anyone dealing with a life-threatening condition.

History and Hope: The International Humanitarian Reader provides a better understanding—both within and outside academia—of the multifaceted demands posed by humanitarian assistance programs. The Reader is a compilation of the most important chapters in the twelve-volume International Humanitarian Affairs book series published by Fordham University Press. Each selected chapter has been edited and updated. In addition, the series editor, Kevin M. Cahill, M.D., has written, among other chapters, an introductory essay explaining the academic evolution of the discipline of humanitarian assistance. It focuses on the “Fordham Experience”: its Institute of International Humanitarian Affairs (IIHA) has developed practical programs for training fieldworkers, especially those dealing with complex emergencies following conflicts and man-made or natural disasters.

Includes proceedings of the Association, papers read at the annual sessions, and list of current medical literature.

Based on the findings from international qualitative human science research on the lived experience of hope, conducted in nine industrialized countries. The studies were guided by the human becoming theory and used the Parse research methodology. Among the groups studied were Taiwanese in a leprosar

With headlines focused on human suffering-civil wars, refugee flows, the spread of disease due to hunger and poor sanitation, population growth, climate change-it is easy to dive into despair. What is needed, instead, is a radical rethinking of global policy to realize the potential for improving the human condition. This book provides hope by examining the basic needs for a fundamental shift in thinking about development and human security for both practical and ethical reasons. Kenneth A. Reinert calls for a basic goods approach that focuses on the provision of nutritious food, clean water, sanitation, health services, education services, housing, electricity, and human security services. This approach bridges two perspectives: that of standard growth, which emphasizes increasing GDP per capita, and that of capabilities/human development, which puts priority on the realization of human potential. Reinert argues that only when growth leads to an increase in the broad-based provision of basic goods and services will the hoped-for expansion of human capabilities and development be achieved. No Small Hope places the basic goods approach on the firm foundation of objective human needs and subsistence rights. It offers a practical agenda for making progress towards human development by focusing on the real determinants of human well-being in an ethical system of moral minimalism. In a world of climate change, increased risk of natural disasters and increased refugee flows, the basic goods approach promises to help alleviate ongoing suffering and address vast deprivations in basic needs fulfillment.

This book addresses important issues of ageing and spirituality and reflects on the impact of culture on both constructs. The papers are contemporary in that they include excerpts of cultural impact on spirituality from New Zealand, Singapore, India, United Kingdom, Australia and the United States. This book marks almost 20 years of international conferences on ageing and spirituality that commenced in January 2000. It opens the conversation to all who were part of this journey of ageing, including older people, practitioners in ageing and aged care, researchers, and those who reflect on the process of growing older. Chapters feature diverse perspectives, highlighting the need for inclusivity in conversations that surround ageing and recognize how development of cultures is influenced by the society where they emerge, and by minority groups within larger society. Chapters also note the occurrence of subcultures of ageing and aged care. The conference was held shortly before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, with the chapters being written often during times of lockdown. Their content reflects the importance of spirituality in times of isolation and can show ways of reaching out to vulnerable older people, of various faiths and cultures, whatever their situations. Changing Cultures of Ageing and Spirituality will be a key resource for academics, researchers, and advanced students of Theology, Divinity and Religious Studies, Gerontology, Sociology, Psychology, Mental Health, and Nursing. The chapters included in this book were originally published as a special issue of Journal of Religion, Spirituality & Aging.

The emotions have long been an interest for those studying ancient Greece and Rome. But while the last few decades have produced excellent studies of individual emotions and the different approaches to them by the major philosophical schools, the focus has been almost entirely on negative emotions. This might give the impression that the Greeks and Romans had little to say about positive emotion, something that would be misguided. As the chapters in this collection indicate, there are representations of positive emotions extending from archaic Greek poetry to Augustine, and in both philosophical works and literary genres as wide-ranging as lyric poetry, forensic oratory, comedy, didactic poetry, and the novel. Nor is the evidence uniform: while many of the literary representations give expression to positive emotion but also describe its loss, the philosophers offer a more optimistic assessment of the possibilities of attaining joy or contentment in this life. The positive emotions show some of the same features that all emotions do. But unlike the negative emotions, which we are able to describe and analyze in great detail because of our preoccupation with them, positive emotions tend to be harder to articulate. Hence the interest of the present study, which considers how positive emotions are described, their relationship to other emotions, the ways in which they are provoked or upset by circumstances, how they complicate and enrich our relationships with other people, and which kinds of positive emotion we should seek to integrate. The ancient works have a great deal to say about all of these topics, and for that reason deserve more study, both for our understanding of antiquity and for our understanding of the positive emotions in general.