ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book elaborates on the intersection of the patient’s and therapist’s experiences of loss and grief and its implications for the therapeutic relationship and for the treatment process. It includes the loss inherent in silence and disconnection from self and others and the inability to articulate one’s affective experience; loss inherent in the destruction of nature and the environment (Wright); loss of country and cultural identity; and the loss inherent in a unique mother/daughter bond (Hershberg). The book addresses the therapist’s reaching out to patients beyond the traditional analytic frame during a time of COVID-19 hopelessness and isolation; mutual sharing of pain and loss between patient and therapist through poignant visual images and masks; and transmuting the patient’s suicidal longings, a metaphor for a life of isolation and lack of meaning, into mutual hope and recognition.
