"I'm like a whirling leaf in the wind," said one of Dr. Lena Nilsson SchOnnesson' s patients, and another "I'm in the claws of HIV." Their voices and those of other HIV-positive patients frame the humanistic and scholarly discussion in this imporยญ tant book. Dr. SchOnnesson, a Fulbright scholar at the HIV Center for Clinical and Behavioral Studies, Columbia University in 1995, has unusually extensive clinical experience in counseling HIV-positive gay men. Her work with 38 such patients treated between 1986 and 1995 is discussed in the pages that follow. Dr. SchOnnesson's longitudinal approach to clinical data is extremely unusual in the psychotherapy literature generally, and in the literature on counseling HIVยญ positive men in particular. Building upon the experience of such recent scholarยญ clinicians as Klitzman, Isay, Schaffner, and others, Dr. SchOnnesson adds someยญ thing unique by analyzing her ongoing detailed notes of the psychotherapeutic process in a systematic quantitative as well as qualitative manner. The analysis of her data is further informed by her coauthor, Dr. Michael Ross, a therapist and investigator whose contribution to the clinical and research literature on the psychotherapeutic treatment of gay men has already been substantial
CONTENT
1. Living on the Boundaries -- Structure of the Book -- Methodology -- Time and Boundaries -- References -- I The HIV Scenario -- 2. The Impact of Chronic and Terminal. Illness -- 3. HIV Testing and Its Impact -- 4. HIV-Related Threats -- 5. The Insidious Persecutory Drama of HIV -- 6. The Impact of HIV Infection on Psychological Functioning and Quality of Life -- II Psychological Landscapes -- 7. The Existential. Context -- 8. HIV Adaptation Processes -- 9. The Shattered Self with Dr. Kerstin Fugl-Meyer -- 10. Autonomy, Boundaries, Control, and Death -- Methodology -- The Sample -- Quantitative and Qualitative Analyses -- Reference
