Meaning in Life
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We all struggle to process our experiences, achievements, and failures within the context of a meaningful life. Knowing how to discuss meaning, and how to help patients find it, is a vital tool for all mental health practitioners. The concept of meaning in life can help clients come to understand their lives as filled with significance and purpose.
In this groundbreaking book, Clara E. Hill analyzes various theoretical approaches to meaning in life and provides clear, practical guidance on how to incorporate meaning in life as a construct and focus in therapy.
Hill weighs decades of research on meaning in life against her own recent work at the University of Maryland, distinguishing meaning in life from other similar constructs and discussing the various sources of meaning that we all can find and apply in our daily lives.
With vivid case examples and hands-on reflection activities, Hill shows how therapists of all orientations can apply meaning in life in their practice.
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Prologue
I. Overview of Meaning in Life
- Definition of Meaning in Life
- Development and Nature of Meaning in Life
- Sources of Meaning
II. Therapeutic Applications for Working With Meaning in Life
- Existing Psychotherapy Theories About Meaning in Life
- A Model for Working With Meaning in Life
- Meaning-in-Life Work With Specific Client Problems
- Case Examples of Clients With Meaning-in-Life Concerns
- Multicultural and Ethical Considerations in Working With Meaning in Life in Psychotherapy
- Finding Meaning in Life: A Self-Help Guide
III. Research on Meaning in Life
- Our Research at the University of Maryland on Meaning in Life
- Measurement of Meaning in Life
IV. Conclusion
- Future Directions
References
Index
About the Author
Clara E. Hill, PhD, earned her doctorate at Southern Illinois University in 1974. She started her career in 1974 as an assistant professor in the Department of Psychology, University of Maryland, and is currently still there as a professor.
She has been president of the Society for Psychotherapy Research, editor of the Journal of Counseling Psychology, and coeditor of Psychotherapy Research.
Her awards include the Leona Tyler Award (APA Division 17: Society of Counseling Psychology), the Distinguished Psychologist Award (APA Division 29: Society for the Advancement of Psychotherapy), the Distinguished Research Career Award (Society for Psychotherapy Research), and the Outstanding Lifetime Achievement Award (Section on Counseling and Psychotherapy Process and Outcome Research, Society for Counseling Psychology).
Her major research interests are helping skills, psychotherapy process and outcome, training and supervising therapists, dreamwork, meaning in life, and qualitative research.
Dr. Hill has published more than 220 journal articles, more than 75 book chapters, and 14 books (including Helping Skills [2014]; Dream Work in Therapy [2004]; and Consensual Qualitative Research [2012]).
Renowned expert Clara E. Hill has set the bar quite high with her forward-thinking and timely new book. No other book on the subject is as up-to-date and comprehensive...surpasses all expectations and delivers an outstanding body of work based on the author's expert theoretical, clinical, and research work conducted over several decades in practice and academic settings...Recommend this groundbreaking book as the go-to resource for therapists interested in better understanding how to approach the topic of meaning in life with their clients.
—Doody's Review Service
Eminently readable, wonderfully personal, expertly researched, and consistently fascinating. Hill applies her considerable scholarly abilities to a profound and yet relatively unexplored therapeutic issue. The book that has emerged — on meaning in life — is something that all clinicians, in both their professional and personal lives, will appreciate greatly.
—Barry A. Farber, PhD, Program in Clinical Psychology, Teachers College, Columbia University, New York, NY
Existential anxiety is an inevitable aspect of the human experience because of the brevity and fragility of life; it is only natural that we wrestle with such questions as how to make the best use of our time on earth. It takes someone with Hill's extensive experience in counseling psychology to write an authoritative guide useful for existential competency training for all psychotherapists and psychologists.
—Paul T. P. Wong, PhD, CPsych, President, International Network on Personal Meaning