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Seeing the light is an expression that usually connotes a conceptual grasp of meaning in all its complexity, while the perception of light is not the issue. In this paper, the authors present a patient with an exquisite light sensitivity that disturbs her sleep; she is "seeing the light" in a symptomatic, concrete way. Light itself has become a compliant and collusive element onto which an aspect of conflict is displaced in the service of self-deception. Ironically, the analysis and deconstruction of the symptom eventually led to the kind of insight that the expression seeing the light conveys. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When deaf adults find themselves the parents of a hearing child, a cycle of disrupted communication and attachment may ensue between the parent and child. Not only may the parent-child bond be compromised, but the social-emotional development of the child and the parents' feelings of empowerment may be at risk as well. This paper details a psychoanalytically-informed approach to working with mixed deaf and hearing parent-child relationships in a nursery setting where the goal is to prevent such potential disruptions and derailments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this investigation was to explore the preventive value of anticipatory grief on the medical adjustment of the aged bereaved. Data were collected for 81 surviving widows and widowers 6 mo. After their loss. Sixteen of the bereaved had spouses who died of a short-term illness, while the remaining 65 subjects were widowed because of a spouse who died of a chronic illness. Thesetwo groups were compared on three criteria of medical adjustment: physician office visits, feeling illwithout contacting a physician, and use of psychotropic medications. The data indicated that the aged bereaved of a lengthy chronic fatal illness did worse than the bereaved of a shorter chronic illness death. By sex, no significant differences were found between widows and widowers of a shortterm illness death. However, differences were noted for the chronic illness category, and within this category for length of chronicity. In both cases widowers showed more medical problems than widows. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]