Product Description

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 an inevitable 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

• Amazon Sales Rank: #94650 in Books
• Published on: 1998-01-05
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 448 pages

From Publishers Weekly
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.
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
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.
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review
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.

Customer Reviews

Wow. Great Help
Wow, this is a Judith Viorst I never knew about.

She really does a good and thorough job of laying out the necessity of losing and gaining our lives as we develop. AND, where we go off the rails when the "necessary losses" do not take place.

This is a useful book for me as a counselor, a Pastor, a human in development.

Good for everyone
Sometimes we wonder why life is so damn tough and sad and tragic. Well, this book doesn't help to answer those questions or to make it seem any better, but it does normalize all of those feelings, and it does explore all of the normal and necessary losses people experience in their lives. My therapist recommended it to me when my not-good-for-me boyfriend broke up with me and in turn, facilitated some of my personal growth and taught me to deal with some really hard feelings. I learned that losing him was necessary to my own well-being. This book is great for everyone.

Awesome!
The title caught my attention and I am so glad I bought it. Its one of the easiest books to read about moving on from losses and helps the reader understand that these losses are indeed, necessary. I have been a therapist for 15 years and have not come across such an engaging and practical book as this one. I myself am a slow reader but got through it in record time. Just do yourself and your loved ones a favor by reading this book!