RECOGNISING SPIRITUAL NEEDS IN PEOPLE WHO ARE DYING
Rachel Stanworth
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Rachel Stanworth
Oxford University Press, 2004
255 pp
ISBN 0-19-852511-7
RRP £24.95.
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This book is based on detailed interviews with 25 patients at St. Christopher’s Hospice. From these interviews, the author explores the meaning
of human spirituality in those facing a terminal illness. She presents a non-religious ‘language of the spirit’, the major aspects of which are its context, its literary form, and its symbolic
form. She goes on to show how patients use this language, using a series of metaphors, to make statements about their situation and their spiritual needs. In the last section, there are some
suggestions about how we as individuals should approach spirituality and spiritual care, but this is not a ‘how to’ book.
This book should be of particular interest to anybody who has a special interest in spirituality and spiritual care, especially those
who provide pastoral care in the palliative care setting.
Roger Woodruff
Director of Palliative Care, Austin Health, Melbourne, Australia.
(March 2004)
Author Information
Rachel Stanworth is a former Researcher at St. Christopher’s Hospice, London, UK.
Table of Contents
Foreword Dame Cicely Saunders
Introduction
Part One - Understanding spirituality – how far can story go?
1. How stories create and disclose meaning
2. Spirituality and psychology: stories with differing limits
3. Stories in the 'listening': collecting data
4. A story in the making: data analysis and interpretation
Part Two - Spiritual concerns expressed in non-religious ways
5. Features of a 'language of spirit'
Part Three - Nine metaphors waiting to be recognised – how spirituality is mediated
in the here and now
6. Patients' sources of meaning and sense of self
7. Marginality and liminality - metaphors of the edge or the way?
8. Metaphors of control
9. Metaphors of letting go
10. Archetypal hero
11. Archetypal mother;
12. Archetypal stranger
13. Recognising life's 'surplus of meaning'
Part Four - Implications for spiritual care
14. Some inconclusive reflections
References
Index
