Necessary Losses

by Judith Viorst

Overview

From grief and mourning to aging and relationships, poet and Redbook contributor Judith Viorst presents a thoughtful and researched study in this examination of love, loss, and letting go.

Drawing on psychoanalysis, literature, and personal experience, Necessary Losses is a philosophy for understanding and accepting life’s inevitabilities.

In Necessary Losses, Judith Viorst turns her considerable talents to a serious and far-reaching subject: how we grow and change through the losses that are a certain and necessary part of life. She argues persuasively that through the loss of our mothers’ protection, the loss of the impossible expectations we bring to relationships, the loss of our younger selves, and the loss of our loved ones through separation and death, we gain deeper perspective, true maturity, and fuller wisdom about life. She has written a book that is both life affirming and life changing.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781439134863
Publisher:	Free Press
Publication date:	05/11/2010
Sold by:	SIMON & SCHUSTER
Format:	eBook
Pages:	448
Sales rank:	176,551
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Judith Viorst was born and brought up in New Jersey, graduated from Rutgers University, moved to Greenwich Village, and has lived in Washington, DC, since 1960, when she married Milton Viorst, a political writer. They have three sons and seven grandchildren. A 1981 graduate of the Washington Psychoanalytic Institute, Viorst writes in many different areas: science books; children’s picture books—including the beloved Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day; adult fiction and nonfiction; poetry for children and adults; and musicals.

Editorial Reviews

Personal experience, great literature liberally quoted here, and study of psychoanalytic theory are combined in this far-ranging, somewhat rambling book by Redbook columnist Viorst to demonstrate that growing and aging involve a succession of conscious and unconscious losses, including the loss of youth. Citing examples, and starting with the loss of the mother-child connection, she indicates that only by learning to relinquish people, places, situations and emotions that concern us at stages of life from childhood to old age can we develop a positive identity and self-image. We must realize, she argues, that these losses are a necessary part of life and growth. A strong sense of self will help us remain positive in the face of the many physical and psychological losses of old age and to accept life's final loss that is death. Losing, Viorst concludes, is the price we pay for living. (April)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Viorst, poet and Redbook contributor, is also a research graduate of the Washington Psychoanalytic Institute, and has worked in psychiatric settings. Her topic is loss because everyone must cope with it throughout life: childhood ends, we recognize that our expectations are unrealistic, friends and family members die, ultimately we die. Viorst offers a competent journalistic treatment of the subject, drawing upon psychoanalytic theory, interviews, and literature, and includes notes and a bibliography. Most of what she says has been said elsewhere, especially in books on mid-life crisis. Popular collections will want to have this because Viorst is known, but readers who expect a profound or truly personal approach to the topic may be disappointed. Margaret Allen, M.L.S., West Lebanon, N.H.

Library Journal

Benjamin Spock, M.D. This perceptive book should absorb and enrich anyone who admits to being human.

United Press International The kind of book that belongs in every household. It is simply healthy to have around.

Rabbi Harold S. Kushner author of When Bad Things Happen to Good People One of the most sensitive and comprehensive books about the human condition I have read in a long time.

From the Publisher