Divorce and Loss: Helping Adults and Children Mourn When a Marriage Comes Apart

Divorce and Loss: Helping Adults and Children Mourn When a Marriage Comes Apart places loss and mourning at the center of the divorce experience and details how therapists can facilitate mourning through individual therapy and through interventions with parents. The book offers detailed clinical vignettes to illuminate family members’ reactions to divorce and to highlight interventions. Ehrlich also explores how failures of mourning in response to divorce create difficulties for people, including bitter, high-conflict divorces. He examines how therapists can intervene more effectively with difficult divorces and avoid ethical and clinical pitfalls. In addition, the book examines the very strong feelings that divorce elicits in therapists and how to deal with these constructively.

Table of Contents:
TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgments Introduction PART I: DIVORCE AND MOURNING: CHALLENGES FOR CHILDREN AND PARENTS Chapter 1: The Losses in Divorce Chapter 2: Mourning Chapter 3: Failures of Mourning Chapter 4: Breakdowns in Connection Between Parents and Children Around Divorce Chapter 5: Entanglement with the Ex-Spouse: Its Impact on Children Chapter 6: The Effects on Adolescents of Parents’ Difficulties Navigating Divorce PART II: INTERVENING: HOW THERAPISTS CAN FACILITATE MOURNING Chapter 7: Bearing Feelings, Facilitating Mourning Chapter 8: Working with Parents Together to Help Children Chapter 9: Helping Parents Bridge the Divide with their Children Chapter 10: Working with the High-Conflict Divorce Chapter 11: Individual Therapy with Children and Adolescents Dealing with Divorce Chapter 12: Individual Therapy with Adults References About the Author

About the Author :
Joshua Ehrlich, PhD, is a clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst who works with children, adolescents, and adults in his practice in Ann Arbor, Michigan. He is an adjunct clinical instructor in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Michigan as well as a faculty member at the Michigan Psychoanalytic Institute.

Review :
Ehrlich successfully constructs a bridge between the two literatures of divorce and child custody. . . .His potential to reach parents, clinicians, and legal professionals with this book and through his clinical work is vast. Written in a highly readable and accessible style, unencumbered by excessive jargon, this practical book offers lucid headings, clinical vignettes, and not a little wisdom. It can inform legal and mental health professionals about the unconscious processes displayed in their offices and courtrooms with knowledge that can significantly affect their assessments, recommendations, and decisions. Divorce and Loss: Helping Adults and Children Mourn When a Marriage Comes Apart, offers an important focus forunderstanding divorce difficulties. . . .[T]he 12 chapters addressvarious issues—stresses between parents and children, entanglements of ex-spouses, andintervention using different treatment formats—Ehrlich analyzes the central problem,regardless of its manifestation. . . .Throughout, the relevant casevignettes presented are helpful. . . .[T]he tight structure and focused content of the book can promote learning, in particular for certain audiences. Mental health providers searching for a comprehensive text on how to work with families dealing with divorce will find this book invaluable. . . [The author] weaves together in a very comprehensible fashion psychoanalytic concepts with current research to provide a picture of the complexities of divorce and best practices for the field. . . . Overall, therapists searching for a comprehensive primer on assisting clients with divorce will find this book extremely helpful. Ehrlich gracefully interlaces the intricate issues that arise when marriages end with helpful therapeutic suggestions for both adults and children. Replete with poignant clinical vignettes, Ehrlich weaves current thinking from researchers with practical suggestions for clinicians working with divorcing couples and families to produce a text useful to clinicians in the field. Parents and children almost always suffer during a divorce. Each member of the family experiences disturbing feelings of separation and loss in the divorce process. Joshua Ehrlich has called upon his extensive clinical experience with the emotional challenges faced by children, adolescents, their adult parents, and their therapists in dealing with the separation and mourning process that always accompanies divorce. Although this book was designed primarily with therapists in mind, it serves as a thoughtful and wonderful addition to the literature and experience that child therapists, adult therapists, mediators, attorneys, and judges call upon when working with families who are experiencing divorce, especially high conflict divorce. I expect to both use and share Ehrlich’s helpful insights and clinical experience, all of which are beautifully distilled in this thoughtful and sharply focused book. Joshua Ehrlich offers a rich and evocative framework for understanding why and how it can be so hard for people to deal effectively with the pain and loss of divorce. In the context of the operation of defenses that interfere with mourning, he shares with the reader his wide experience of the many forms such troubles take, and suggests effective interventions. This book is an excellent resource for clinicians working with patients of all ages in varied roles and settings. Any therapist who has treated children whose parents are navigating through a stormy divorce or its aftermath knows how challenging such work can be. This book provides a clear road map for therapists working their way through the minefield of rage and sadness that divorcing parents and their children too often experience. Focusing on the theme that intense divorce conflict often flows from problems in mourning the losses that divorce represents, Dr. Ehrlich weaves theory and striking case examples together to provide understanding and specific suggestions that will be enormously helpful to anyone trying to help parents and children achieve a satisfying outcome. Overall, therapists searching for a comprehensive primer on assisting clients with divorce will find this book extremely helpful. Ehrlich gracefully interlaces the intricate issues that arise when marriages end with helpful therapeutic suggestions for both adults and children. Replete with poignant clinical vignettes, Ehrlich weaves current thinking from researchers with practical suggestions for clinicians working with divorcing couples and families to produce a text useful to clinicians in the field.