63rd Annual Conference

Workshop 88

Saying Goodbye: A Means to the End

Chairs:         

Jeffrey Mendell, M.D., CGP, Medical Director, Outpatient Mental Health Clinic, Alleghany Country Health Department, Cumberland, Maryland

Marsha Vannicelli, Ph.D., CGP, FAGPA, Associate Clinical Professor, Harvard Medical School, Cambridge, Massachusetts

Salient aspects of termination and loss (and attendant sadness, regret and disappointment) will be experienced and elucidated through a structured format designed to help participants understand and make meaning of the process of saying goodbye.  This workshop, in the final segment of this five day conference, will provide an opportunity for participants to experience the impact and explore the meaning of endings in their own lives, as well as in the groups that they lead, as they come up against this particular end boundary--the end of the conference.

experiential-sharing of work experiences

Learning Objectives:

The attendee will be able to:

1. Describe salient aspects of termination, grieving and loss as it relates to their own personal experience.

2. Enumerate the complicated feelings associated with endings.

3. Describe the work that gets done as people are faced with the task of saying goodbye.

4. Prepare their patients more effectively for the work of termination.

1. Lothstein, L. (1993). Termination Processes in Group Psychotherapy. In H. Kaplan & B. Sadock, (Eds.). Comprehensive Group Psychotherapy, Philadelphia: Williams and Wilkins. 115-124.

2. Schermer, V. & Klein, R. (1996). Termination in Group Psychotherapy from the Perspectives of Contemporary Object Relations Theory and Self Psychology. International Journal of Group Psychotherapy, 46 (1), 99-115.

3. Vannicelli, M. (1992). Removing the Final Patient Roadblocks: Termination. In Removing the Roadblocks: Group Psychotherapy with substance abusers and family members. New York: The Guilford Press