This book uses personal memoir to examine links between private trauma and the socio-cultural approach to death and memory developed within Death Studies. The authors, two key Death Studies scholars, tell the stories that constitute their family lives. Each bears witness to the experiences of men who were either killed or traumatised during World War One and World War Two and shows the ongoing implications of these events for those left behind. The book illustrates how the rich oral history and material culture legacy bequeathed by these wars raises issues for everyone alive today. Belonging to a generation who grew up in the shadow of war, Komaromy and Hockey ask how we can best convey unimaginable events to later generations, and what practical, moral and ethical demands this brings. Family Life, Trauma and Loss in the Twentieth Century will be of interest to students and scholars across a range of disciplines including Death Studies, Military History, Research Methods, Family History, the Sociology of the Family and Life Writing.

This collection shows what happens when facing the inevitable and sometimes expected death of a parent, and how such an ordinary part of life as parental death might connect with the children left behind. In many ways, individual deaths are extraordinary and leave a unique legacy – a kind of haunting. The authors' accounts seek to make sense of death through witnessing its enactment and recording its detail. All the authors are experienced researchers in the field of death studies, and their collective expertise encompasses ethnography, psychology, sociology and anthropology. The individual descriptions of death and grief capture the everyday practicalities of managing death and dying, including, for example, the difficulties of caring responsibilities and the realities of dealing with strained family relationships. These accounts show the raw detail of death; they are deeply personal observations framed within critical theories. As established scholars and practitioners that have researched and worked in end-of-life and bereavement care, the authors in this anthology offer a unique perspective on how identity is shaped by a close bereavement. The book employs a strong editorial narrative that blends memoir with theoretical engagement, and will be of interest to death studies scholars, as well as practitioners involved in end-of-life care and bereavement care and anyone who has experienced the death of a parent.

Recent years have witnessed growing scholarly interest in the history of death. Increasing academic attention toward death as a historical subject in its own right is very much linked to its pre-eminent place in 20th-century history, and Germany, predictably, occupies a special place in these inquiries. This collection of essays explores how German mourning changed over the 20th century in different contexts, with a particular view to how death was linked to larger issues of social order and cultural self-understanding. It contributes to a history of death in 20th-century Germany that does not begin and end with the Third Reich.

The field of refugee family research and intervention forms a growing field of scientific study, focussing on the refugee family as the central niche of coping with, and giving meaning to, trauma, cultural uprooting, and exile. This important new book develops an understanding of the role of refugee family relationships in post-trauma healing and provides an in-depth analysis of central clinical-therapeutic themes in refugee family psychosocial interventions. Expert contributions from across transcultural psychiatry, psychology, psychotherapy and social work have provided chapters on post-trauma reconstruction in refugee family relationships, trauma care for refugee families, and intersectorial psychosocial interventions with refugee families. This exploration of refugee family systems in both research and clinical practice aims to promote a systemic perspective in health and social services working with families in refugee mental health care.

Explaining Creativity is a comprehensive and authoritative overview of scientific studies on creativity and innovation. Sawyer discusses not only arts like painting and writing, but also science, stage performance, business innovation, and creativity in everyday life. Sawyer's approach is interdisciplinary. In addition to examining psychological studies on creativity, he draws on anthropologists' research on creativity in non-Western cultures, sociologists' research on the situations, contexts, and networks of creative activity, and cognitive neuroscientists' studies of the brain.

This four-volume reference work surveys American literature from the early 20th century to the present day, featuring a diverse range of American works and authors and an expansive selection of primary source materials. Bringing useful and engaging material into the classroom, this four-volume set covers more than a century of American literary history—from 1900 to the present. Twentieth-Century and Contemporary American Literature in Context profiles authors and their works and provides overviews of literary movements and genres through which readers will understand the historical, cultural, and political contexts that have shaped American writing. Twentieth-Century and Contemporary American Literature in Context provides wide coverage of authors, works, genres, and movements that are emblematic of the diversity of modern America. Not only are major literary movements represented, such as the Beats, but this work also highlights the emergence and development of modern Native American literature, African American literature, and other representative groups that showcase the diversity of American letters. A rich selection of primary documents and background material provides indispensable information for student research.

In this groundbreaking book, a leading clinical psychiatrist redefines how we think about and treat victims of trauma. A "stunning achievement" that remains a "classic for our generation." (Bessel van der Kolk, M.D., author of The Body Keeps the Score). Trauma and Recovery is revered as the seminal text on understanding trauma survivors. By placing individual experience in a broader political frame, Harvard psychiatrist Judith Herman argues that psychological trauma is inseparable from its social and political context. Drawing on her own research on incest, as well as a vast literature on combat veterans and victims of political terror, she shows surprising parallels between private horrors like child abuse and public horrors like war. Hailed by the New York Times as "one of the most important psychiatry works to be published since Freud," Trauma and Recovery is essential reading for anyone who seeks to understand how we heal and are healed.

This book examines the effects of sociocultural trauma throughout the 20th century on interpersonal and family relationships in five Eastern European countries, drawing on the perspectives of mental health practitioners. Chapters employ a systemic perspective to explore the unique social, political, and cultural contexts that influence relationships in each country with a particular focus on implications for psychological and relational well-being. The volume demonstrates the importance of examining the cultural and sociocontextual nuances and complexity that may influence the impact of historical events on relationships, elucidating similarities and differences among countries in how the collective trauma has influenced them. It assists family therapists and other mental health practitioners in recognizing cultural and social factors that may influence their work with families, individuals, or couples living in these countries or who have immigrated from them. Key areas of coverage include: Descriptions of each country’s experience of sociocultural trauma and the current social-cultural-economic-political contexts. Impact of trauma on interpersonal relationships across various social locations and national and ethnic identities within the existing borders. Current challenges, recommendations for clinical practice, and future directions for research and practice. Sociocultural Trauma and Well-Being in Eastern European Family Therapy is an essential resource for clinicians, therapists, and practitioners as well as researchers, professors, and graduate students in family studies, clinical psychology, and public health as well as all interrelated disciplines.

Personal growth is key in the achievement of happiness and for a sense of mastery in one’s own life despite inevitable adversarial situations. Your Most Difficult Child taps into the most enduring human relationship—a parent’s love for a child. This love relationship guides the reader to self-examine and to recognize inner strength versus limitation. It is an opportunity to be set free from the inside out, unhindered by external circumstances. The goal is for transformation and transcendence to an improved version of one’s self, equipped with mature judgment, and freedom from guilt and shame. This book aims at stimulating personal reflection. A reader who is interested in self-development through active self-observation and engagement with the external world will replace the tendency to accuse external factors with a renewed sense of personal responsibility. One will find enhanced inner power to: • Endure a given situation, • Reduce a pre-existing bias that is causing perpetual cognitive distortion, and • Modify what can be changed while pursuing a tailor-made path towards personal happiness. Your Most Difficult Child crosses boundaries of age, geographical location, race, and nationality. At any stage of life, a keen reader can activate their inner power to value their own integrity, to maintain psychological equilibrium, and to perceive others as journey-mates on route to becoming the authentic people they were meant to be.

In the years following World War II the health and well-being of the nation was of primary concern to the British government. The essays in this collection examine the relationship between health and stress in post-war Britain through a series of carefully connected case studies.