3rd Friday of every month from 2:30-4:00 pm
4400 East-West Highway
Bethesda, MD 20814

The focus of the group will be the aging process and treatment of older adults. We will be reading books that discuss clinical phenomena and therapeutic approaches as well as fictionalized accounts and other literary works about the aging process. Group discussions will be informed by members’ work with older adults and their ways of dealing (or not) with their own aging and mortality.

Members who attend this study group will be able to:

  1. Considering the title of the book, Another Country, identify 3 ways in which the passage from middle age to old age is analogous to moving to a foreign land.
  2. Identify 3 factors that contribute to the majority of elders living segregated lives.
  3. Describe 4 ways in which xenophobia applies to the plight of the elderly.
  4. Identify 3 ways that moving from a communal to an individualistic culture has affected the elderly.
  5. Describe the ways in which aging is like chronic PTSD.
  6. Enumerate positive coping strategies that the elderly and their caregivers can employ.
  7. Identify how interactions between ‘grandparents’ and younger generations can be mutually beneficial.
  8. Discuss Mary Pipher’s contention that intergenerational connections are vital to the continuity of culture and the health of communities.
  9. Discuss the fear of dying as it is experienced through the developmental stages of life.
  10. Describe ways of recognizing covert death anxiety hidden behind other symptoms
  11. Define what Yalom means by “The Awakening Experience”.
  12. Identify and discuss life milestones as awakening experiences.
  13. Describe three Epicurean arguments that may be used to ameliorate death anxiety.
  14. Enumerate some of the aphorisms, or ‘mighty thoughts’, that can help to overcome the fear of death.
  15. Distinguish between everyday loneliness and existential loneliness.
  16. Describe how to use presence and gratitude to alleviate the loneliness of death.
  17. Discuss how people influence one another through the rippling effect.
  18. List Yalom’s four ultimate concerns germane to the practice of psychotherapy.
  19. Describe the connection between love, sex and death.
  20. Explain three rationales Yalom suggests for using immediacy in psychotherapy.
  21. Discuss Yalom’s stance on the use of therapist self-disclosure and how this relates to a self-psychological and a relational approach to psychotherapy.