Phyllis Rolfe Silverman

Areas of Expertise

Bereavement Over the Life Cycle; Mutual Help

Email: smpr2@brandeis.edu

Current Project

Next year I will  complete a chapter tentatively titled “Mutual Help” for the Handbook on Group Counselling to be published by Oxford; work with  the research committee at the Children’s Room to realize an on going research project; make contributions to my Psychology Today Blog on a weekly basis and continue to do what is needed to market my new book.

Biography

My  early work focused on how the widowed dealt with the death of a spouse and learned that a woman’s sense of self is changed by this experience.  I became very aware of the needs of dependent children in these families, as these children dealt with the death of a parent. This interest led to the MGH/Harvard Child Bereavement Study. I was project director and co-principal investigator. What I learned is reflected in my writing about the bereaved family and in my association with the Children’s Room. My research has pioneered the value of learning from peers who share a common problem and this is exemplified by the helping mode in the Children’s Room.

A primary concern of mine is the way grief is being medicalized in our society. This is reflected in the language we use to define aspects of the grieving process as “symptoms” as if it is an illness, from which one recovers. I suggest if we changed the language  we use we could look at mourning behavior in a more normal context, and recognize the we all need to be experts as we face this fact in our own lives.

Education

Ph.D., Brandeis University

Sc. M. Hyg., Harvard School of Public Health

M.S.S., Smith College School for Social Work

Representative Publications

Silverman, Phyllis R. and Kelly, Madelyn. A Parent’s Guide to Raising Grieving Children: Rebuilding Your Family After The Death of a Loved One. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009.

Silverman, Phyllis. Widow to Widow: How the Bereaved help Each Other. New York: Bruner- Maizel, 2004.

Links

Personal Web Page