ABSTRACT
It is appropriate for people who need to recognize and validate varied aspects of themselves affected by loss and access potential new sources of meaning in order to reconstruct their identity. As practitioners, the authors may need to stimulate the accessibility, differentiation and integration of a broad range of I-positions to facilitate the process of recomposing one's self and finding new meaning. After explaining and giving examples of such self and other aspects, the therapist invites the client to identify and symbolize with stones all relevant I-positions that have been affected in some fashion by a loss. Gene sought counseling following the loss of his job in a corporate reorganization several months before. The authors use composition work, the three-dimensional representation of the inner landscape of self, to allow a client to view the loss and transition from different angles, literally rotating the composition on a tabletop to reveal different aspects and experience their associated meanings.
