AWARENESS OF MORALITY
Editor. Death, Value and Meaning Series. Amityville: Baywood Press, September, 1995.

All of us who work in the field of death and dying are, beyond our projects and our practices, working on our awareness of our own mortality. This richly stimulating collection of original articles challenges the reader to develop a disciplined and focused awareness of his/her own mortality, and to grapple with the implications. Awareness of Mortality contributes to the basic and passionate intellectual quest for meaning in thanatology. It provokes the reader with a wide range of ideas and thinking styles to deepen the questioning process within his/her own self.

Awareness of Mortality explores issues in philosophy, ethics, developmental psychology, psychoanalytic psychology, idealistic humanism, sociology, spiritual traditions, and other humanities that thanatology overlaps. Awareness of Mortality is an introduction to a broad-based philosophical thanatology. The fourteen chapters range from charming to challenging. Each contributor provides a window into ideas that offer new perspectives and understanding. Sometimes disturbing, often illuminating, the diverse contributors to this work provoke us to reflect on ourselves and our mortality, to use our mind, as fully as our hearts, while we explore and mature as thanatologists. What can thanatology expect from philosophy?

In the face of trauma, our assumptive world -- the world experienced as normal or predictable -- is seriously disrupted. This disruption, this "loss of our assumptive world" functions as a metaphor for traumatic loss in this volume, providing extraordinary insight into the psychology of trauma, loss and change. Loss of the Assumptive World builds on Ronnie Janoff-Bulman's new psychology of trauma and Colin Murray Parkes' principle of psychosocial change. It is a concept that allows for the close examination of the psychological disturbance that takes place in the wake of a traumatic event. The authors in this collection examine the loss of the assumptive world and its reconstruction from diverse theoretical perspectives including constructivist and narrative theory, Kohutian self-psychology, betrayal theory, psychoanalysis and coping theory.

The diversity of perspectives and distinct interpretations illuminates the loss of the assumptive world concept and its clinical usefulness while articulating a spirit of hope and resilience in the face of traumatic loss. The contributors to this text include many leading authors in the fields of thanatology and traumatology.

Book selected for inclusion in the 2006 edition of Doody's Core Titles in Health Sciences and is a highly recommended addition to libraries serving health sciences specialists.

For writing this book, I was selected in 2006 for inclusion in Contemporary Authors, a Macmillan/Gale group reference book of the approximately 100,000 most noteworthy authors of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

see book reviews of this book in the Intellectual Disabilities/Publications section of this website

THE SHAME OF DEATH, GRIEF AND TRAUMA
Editor. New York: Routledge, 2010.

The Shame of Death, Grief and Trauma presents a collection of unique essays around the theme that shame is the central psychological and moral force in understanding death, grief and trauma. The authors show the many sidedness and the varied significances of shame as it is present in death, grief and trauma. While the primary emphasis is on psychological theory and practice, perspectives on shame and loss in the humanities is also examined.

Praise for The Shame of Death, Grief and Trauma:

 In this stimulating and enlightening volume, Jeffrey Kauffman and his team have courageously and insightfully navigated through our shame about our shame, effectively lifting back the psychological, social, and cultural veils that traditionally have shielded the topic from our thanatological eyes.  With both philosophical profundity yet clinical pragmatism, the reader is guided in recognizing, understanding, and most importantly intervening in this often unacknowledged, but critically elemental, experience of the dying, the bereaved, and the traumatized.  This volume is destined to stand out as a beacon, simultaneously illuminating the myriad features and impacts of shame while elucidating effective approaches to minimize or treat it.  Those contending with loss and trauma will benefit enormously as a result.   --- Therese A. Rando, Ph.D., BCETS, BCBT, Clinical Director, The Institute for the Study and Treatment of Loss, Warwick, RI, USA.  Author of, among numerous others, Treatment of Complicated Mourning.