Olga V. Lehmann – författare

In Silence: The Psychology and the Craft for Emotional Wellbeing, the author—a psychotherapist, university professor, educator, and researcher—takes the reader into a thought-provoking and heartfelt journey. She offers original perspectives and vulnerable stories from her clients, students, and personal life. Drawing on, among others, ethnographic and autoethnographic accounts, Lehmann serves the reader with psychological insights, offering a timely, critical, and thorough viewpoint to contrast with an overload of misinformation about what silence is and how people should feel when quiet. The reader will be challenged to aspire to balance when communicating or connecting with themselves, with others, with nature, or with art, or, for some, as part of a spiritual path. Whether in nature, at work meetings, on the road, in a classroom, in the therapy room, or at the dinner table, silences appear as coordinates, and this book is the missing map for surviving and thriving when navigating toward well-being.

This workbook is designed to help bereaved parents find words for grief in their quest for well-being after the devastating death of a child by offering a hands-on approach to therapeutic writing that can be used as a means of self-help, in collaboration with therapists, or in the context of support groups featuring writing for well-being.The book presents a seven-week therapeutic writing program that integrates field-tested writing techniques with general psychoeducation around grief and related emotions as well as the quest for meaning in a life transformed by loss. Each module shares a common structure, checking in with the writer, introducing a theme for the week, and providing specific prompts to safely engage the loss, explore the emotions it engenders, and foster more adaptive meaning-making about a devastating life experience. Readers are given the opportunity to tailor the brief immersive writing to their unique circumstances, and to respond to reflective questions that invite greater clarity and self-compassion as they attempt to re-enter life following loss. In this respect, the book acknowledges the diversity of ways that parents can adapt to the loss of a child and offers practical counsel and self-reflective tools to support them in this effort.Bereaved parents, grandparents, and family members will find the workbook to be a valuable resource as they work to cope with their grief. It will also be of use to professionals who want to facilitate writing courses for bereaved parents or provide them with individual support.

This workbook is designed to help bereaved parents find words for grief in their quest for well-being after the devastating death of a child by offering a hands-on approach to therapeutic writing that can be used as a means of self-help, in collaboration with therapists, or in the context of support groups featuring writing for well-being.The book presents a seven-week therapeutic writing program that integrates field-tested writing techniques with general psychoeducation around grief and related emotions as well as the quest for meaning in a life transformed by loss. Each module shares a common structure, checking in with the writer, introducing a theme for the week, and providing specific prompts to safely engage the loss, explore the emotions it engenders, and foster more adaptive meaning-making about a devastating life experience. Readers are given the opportunity to tailor the brief immersive writing to their unique circumstances, and to respond to reflective questions that invite greater clarity and self-compassion as they attempt to re-enter life following loss. In this respect, the book acknowledges the diversity of ways that parents can adapt to the loss of a child and offers practical counsel and self-reflective tools to support them in this effort.Bereaved parents, grandparents, and family members will find the workbook to be a valuable resource as they work to cope with their grief. It will also be of use to professionals who want to facilitate writing courses for bereaved parents or provide them with individual support.

Exploring the potential of poetry and poetic language as a means of conveying perspectives on later life, this book examines questions such as ‘how can we understand ageing and later life?’ and ‘how can we capture the ambiguities and complexities that the experiences of growing old in time and place entail?’ As poetic language illuminates, transfigures and enchants our being in the world, it also offers insights into the existential questions that are amplified as we age, including the vulnerabilities and losses that humble us and connect us.This volume suggests a path towards the poetics of ageing by means of presenting analyses of published poetry on ageing ranging from William Shakespeare to George Oppen; the use of reading and writing poetry among lay people in old age, including persons living with dementia; and the poetic nuances that emerge from other literary practices and contexts in relation to ageing – counting personal poetic reflections from many of the contributing authors.

Exploring the potential of poetry and poetic language as a means of conveying perspectives on later life, this book examines questions such as ‘how can we understand ageing and later life?’ and ‘how can we capture the ambiguities and complexities that the experiences of growing old in time and place entail?’ As poetic language illuminates, transfigures and enchants our being in the world, it also offers insights into the existential questions that are amplified as we age, including the vulnerabilities and losses that humble us and connect us.This volume suggests a path towards the poetics of ageing by means of presenting analyses of published poetry on ageing ranging from William Shakespeare to George Oppen; the use of reading and writing poetry among lay people in old age, including persons living with dementia; and the poetic nuances that emerge from other literary practices and contexts in relation to ageing – counting personal poetic reflections from many of the contributing authors.

This book explores the deep, imaginative, and creative power of poetry as part of the human experience. How poetry provides insight into human psychology is a question at the beginning of its theoretical development, and is a constant challenge for cultural psychologists and the humanities alike.

This Brief brings together empirical accounts that contribute to the investigation of the cultural phenomena of deep personal experiences.