R&L Logo R&L Logo
  • GENERAL
    • Browse by Subjects
    • New Releases
    • Coming Soon
    • Chases's Calendar
  • ACADEMIC
    • Textbooks
    • Browse by Course
    • Instructor's Copies
    • Monographs & Research
    • Reference
  • PROFESSIONAL
    • Education
    • Intelligence & Security
    • Library Services
    • Business & Leadership
    • Museum Studies
    • Music
    • Pastoral Resources
    • Psychotherapy
  • FREUD SET
Cover Image
Hardback
Paperback
share of facebook share on twitter
Add to GoodReads

Making Meaning of Loss

Change and Challenge Across the Lifespan

Richard L. Hayes

Making Meaning of Loss: Change and Challenge Across the Lifespan is about how change brings loss to our lives, how we make meaning of loss, and how our experience with loss directs our encounters with loss in the future. Each loss challenges us in this way: to rethink our world view, to ask who we have become, and to reinvent ourselves anew. Taking a lifespan approach, Hayes examines how we make sense of the losses that change brings in each period of our lives and how the way in which we meet the challenge that each loss brings directs our encounters with loss in the future. In addition, he provides suggestions for how earlier losses can become fruitful allies in encounters with change in the present and how caregivers can help others to make meaning of the loss in their lives. Above all, this book is about how caregivers can help others learn from the losses in their lives and to recognize what part of the past to bring along into the present in constructing a more reliable self for meeting the challenges of an uncertain future.

  • Details
  • Details
  • Author
  • Author
  • TOC
  • TOC
  • Reviews
  • Reviews
Lexington Books
Pages: 174 • Trim: 6¼ x 9¼
978-1-66692-450-3 • Hardback • November 2022 • $105.00 • (£81.00)
978-1-66692-452-7 • Paperback • March 2024 • $39.99 • (£30.00)
Subjects: Psychology / Grief & Loss, Psychology / General, Psychology / Social Psychology

Richard L. Hayes is professor emeritus of the University of Georgia and dean emeritus of the University of South Alabama.

Chapter 1: Loss as a Part of Life

Chapter 2: Making Meaning of Loss

Chapter 3: Mediating in Loss

Chapter 4: Infants and Toddlers

Chapter 5: Middle Childhood

Chapter 6: Adolescents and Youth

Chapter 7: Midlife

Chapter 8: Late(r) Life

Chapter 9: Caring for the Caregiver

Hayes reviews his lifetime of work on loss from his perspective as a human development scholar. He argues that loss is the nature of life, that it is cumulative throughout life, and that it is mediated on each occasion by cognitive-emotional skills and by continual assimilation and accommodation. Citing Lawrence Kohlberg and Jean Piaget, he claims that the capacity to problem solve expands as people age. Every individual comes to recognize that they are different from who they were in the past and is able to consider that a loss in the present is also a loss of what could be in the future, something a young child cannot do. Hayes reviews the meaning of loss at different ages. The final chapter describes vivid examples of the challenges COVID-19 posed for medical staff, teachers, and small business owners. The conditions they lived and continue to live with as they confront moral distress and ambiguous loss allow no time for processing their grief. Hayes emphasizes the need for support from others experiencing similar circumstances. This book is likely to be an important resource for anyone dealing with loss during a time of rapid change. Recommended. Advanced undergraduates through faculty; professionals.


— Choice Reviews


I found this to be a 'big' book—the work of a lifetime, in a sense, and a thoughtful, engaged life, obviously—one committed to deep and compassionate witnessing by an author who has dedicated decades to hearing the call of distress on the part of countless clients undergoing daunting trauma and transition... I frankly regard it as a minor masterpiece, and certainly the magnum opus of Richard L. Hayes' career as a clinical scholar. Its most commendable content contribution is providing a sweeping and yet well-integrated account of loss and its role in fostering change and meaning-making across the lifespan, and doing so in a way that does not require the reader to be a specialist in the numerous literatures on which he draws.


— Robert A. Neimeyer, University of Memphis


Making Meaning of Loss

Change and Challenge Across the Lifespan

Cover Image
Hardback
Paperback
Summary
Summary
  • Making Meaning of Loss: Change and Challenge Across the Lifespan is about how change brings loss to our lives, how we make meaning of loss, and how our experience with loss directs our encounters with loss in the future. Each loss challenges us in this way: to rethink our world view, to ask who we have become, and to reinvent ourselves anew. Taking a lifespan approach, Hayes examines how we make sense of the losses that change brings in each period of our lives and how the way in which we meet the challenge that each loss brings directs our encounters with loss in the future. In addition, he provides suggestions for how earlier losses can become fruitful allies in encounters with change in the present and how caregivers can help others to make meaning of the loss in their lives. Above all, this book is about how caregivers can help others learn from the losses in their lives and to recognize what part of the past to bring along into the present in constructing a more reliable self for meeting the challenges of an uncertain future.

Details
Details
  • Lexington Books
    Pages: 174 • Trim: 6¼ x 9¼
    978-1-66692-450-3 • Hardback • November 2022 • $105.00 • (£81.00)
    978-1-66692-452-7 • Paperback • March 2024 • $39.99 • (£30.00)
    Subjects: Psychology / Grief & Loss, Psychology / General, Psychology / Social Psychology
Author
Author
  • Richard L. Hayes is professor emeritus of the University of Georgia and dean emeritus of the University of South Alabama.

Table of Contents
Table of Contents
  • Chapter 1: Loss as a Part of Life

    Chapter 2: Making Meaning of Loss

    Chapter 3: Mediating in Loss

    Chapter 4: Infants and Toddlers

    Chapter 5: Middle Childhood

    Chapter 6: Adolescents and Youth

    Chapter 7: Midlife

    Chapter 8: Late(r) Life

    Chapter 9: Caring for the Caregiver

Reviews
Reviews
  • Hayes reviews his lifetime of work on loss from his perspective as a human development scholar. He argues that loss is the nature of life, that it is cumulative throughout life, and that it is mediated on each occasion by cognitive-emotional skills and by continual assimilation and accommodation. Citing Lawrence Kohlberg and Jean Piaget, he claims that the capacity to problem solve expands as people age. Every individual comes to recognize that they are different from who they were in the past and is able to consider that a loss in the present is also a loss of what could be in the future, something a young child cannot do. Hayes reviews the meaning of loss at different ages. The final chapter describes vivid examples of the challenges COVID-19 posed for medical staff, teachers, and small business owners. The conditions they lived and continue to live with as they confront moral distress and ambiguous loss allow no time for processing their grief. Hayes emphasizes the need for support from others experiencing similar circumstances. This book is likely to be an important resource for anyone dealing with loss during a time of rapid change. Recommended. Advanced undergraduates through faculty; professionals.


    — Choice Reviews


    I found this to be a 'big' book—the work of a lifetime, in a sense, and a thoughtful, engaged life, obviously—one committed to deep and compassionate witnessing by an author who has dedicated decades to hearing the call of distress on the part of countless clients undergoing daunting trauma and transition... I frankly regard it as a minor masterpiece, and certainly the magnum opus of Richard L. Hayes' career as a clinical scholar. Its most commendable content contribution is providing a sweeping and yet well-integrated account of loss and its role in fostering change and meaning-making across the lifespan, and doing so in a way that does not require the reader to be a specialist in the numerous literatures on which he draws.


    — Robert A. Neimeyer, University of Memphis


ALSO AVAILABLE

  • Cover image for the book Choosing Light: Transforming Grief through the Practice of Mindful Photography and Self-Reflection
  • Cover image for the book Navigating Athletic Identity, Retirement Transitions, and Self-Discovery: Exiting the Arena
  • Cover image for the book They Left It All Behind: Trauma, Loss, and Memory Among Eastern European Jewish Immigrants and their Children
  • Cover image for the book In Search of Return: Mourning the Disappearances in Kashmir
  • Cover image for the book Rethinking the Relation between Women and Psychoanalysis: Loss, Mourning, and the Feminine
  • Cover image for the book Choosing Light: Transforming Grief through the Practice of Mindful Photography and Self-Reflection
  • Cover image for the book Navigating Athletic Identity, Retirement Transitions, and Self-Discovery: Exiting the Arena
  • Cover image for the book They Left It All Behind: Trauma, Loss, and Memory Among Eastern European Jewish Immigrants and their Children
  • Cover image for the book In Search of Return: Mourning the Disappearances in Kashmir
  • Cover image for the book Rethinking the Relation between Women and Psychoanalysis: Loss, Mourning, and the Feminine
facebook icon twitter icon instagram icon linked in icon NEWSLETTERS
ABOUT US
  • Mission Statement
  • Employment
  • Privacy
  • Accessibility Statement
CONTACT
  • Company Directory
  • Publicity and Media Queries
  • Rights and Permissions
  • Textbook Resource Center
AUTHOR RESOURCES
  • Royalty Contact
  • Production Guidelines
  • Manuscript Submissions
ORDERING INFORMATION
  • Rowman & Littlefield
  • National Book Network
  • Ingram Publisher Services UK
  • Special Sales
  • International Sales
  • eBook Partners
  • Digital Catalogs
IMPRINTS
  • Rowman & Littlefield
  • Lexington Books
  • Hamilton Books
  • Applause Books
  • Amadeus Press
  • Backbeat Books
  • Bernan
  • Hal Leonard Books
  • Limelight Editions
  • Co-Publishing Partners
  • Globe Pequot
  • Down East Books
  • Falcon Guides
  • Gooseberry Patch
  • Lyons Press
  • Muddy Boots
  • Pineapple Press
  • TwoDot Books
  • Stackpole Books
PARTNERS
  • American Alliance of Museums
  • American Association for State and Local History
  • Brookings Institution Press
  • Center for Strategic & International Studies
  • Council on Foreign Relations
  • Fairleigh Dickinson University Press
  • Fortress Press
  • The Foundation for Critical Thinking
  • Lehigh University Press
  • United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
  • Other Partners...