Featured Speakers

April 9, 2010
2:00– 3:15 p.m.

Disciplining Remembering Through Case Studies
Robert Stake, PhD
Grieving is an extraordinary human experience, one that should not be avoided nor one to which someone should succumb. Grieving is borne and overcome partly through the act of remembering the patchwork of what has been lost, and capturing that can serve as sustenance and invigoration. The act of remembering needs no artifice; a disciplined recall may aid those grieving and those who help the grieving. Unlike counseling and pastoral care, the collection of memories and artifacts that give new understanding draws from observation, interview and document review, where the subject is what has been lost and the theme is an enhanced meaning of that lost life. The many meanings of life and death that are revealed as well as the thematic approach that I call “case study,” may be of value to those who work through the grieving process.

Robert Stake, PhD is an advocate and methodologist of case study, the study of a single person, group or entity. He engaged in it first as an educational researcher to improve the theory and practice of program evaluation. Since 1975, he has served as director of the Center for Instructional Research and Curriculum Evaluation at the University of Illinois. His approach, “responsive evaluation,” particularly through case study, emphasizes research on personal experience, group interaction, and institutional processes and contexts. Among the case reports he worked on are Quieting Reform, a book on Charles Murray’s evaluation of Cities-in-Schools, Case Studies in Science Education, Disciplined-Based Art Education for the Getty Trust, Custom and Cherishing: the Arts in the Elemen­tary School; and the Step-by-Step preschool programs in Ukraine, Romania and Slovakia. His research method books are: The Art of Case Study Research, Multiple Case Study Analysis, Standards-Based and Responsive Evaluation, Evaluating the Arts in Education and Qualitative Research: Studying How Things Work. For his evaluation work, he received the 1988 Lazarsfeld Award from the American Evaluation Association and, in 2007, the President’s Citation from the American Educational Research Association. He holds honorary doctorates from the University of Uppsala and the University of Valladolid. For many years, Bob has been a prominent voice in a transatlantic ‘invisible college’ of like-minded researchers questioning contexts and conventions for educational research, infusing investigation with fairness and a valuing of professional experience.

Ethical Imperatives for the Grief Counselor: ADEC's Code of Ethics and Beyond
Louis Gamino, PhD
One index of the maturity of thanatology as a professional field is ADEC’s own Code of Ethics (2006). Knowing these domain-specific ethical and professional standards is crucial to maintaining death competence — specialized skill in tolerating and managing clients’ problems related to dying, death and bereavement (Gamino & Ritter, 2009). The author explores a case example of “empathic fail­ure” (cf. Graybar & Leonard, 2005) resulting from a lack of death competence on the part of the provider to illustrate the importance of death competence in delivering ethically sensitive and clinically effective grief counseling. Death competence connotes other ethical mandates as well, such as continuing professional development, self-care for the provider and employment of a professional will.

Louis A. Gamino, PhD, FT is associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral science at Scott & White Healthcare and Texas A&M Health Science Center College of Medicine, Temple, Texas. He was the 2008 recipient of ADEC’s Clinical Practice Award and former editor of ADEC’s The Forum publication. He is the author of Ethical Practice in Grief Counseling (Springer, 2009) and When Your Baby Dies Through Miscarriage or Stillbirth (Augsburg Fortress, 2002).

Restorative Retelling After Violent Death
Edward Rynearson, MD
Stories of violent dying are our oldest and most universal — they are the stuff of ancient myths, religious texts and fairy tales. Our contemporary literature and the major stories in our media seem obsessed with violent dying narrative, particularly on local news where violent death reports comprise 50% of reporting. After the violent death of a loved one, the bereaved is left in a narrative paradox — forced to retell a story of a violent dying they rarely witnessed (95% of violent deaths are not witnessed by family members). Because there was no role for them in the dying drama, they are left to process a story they cannot “own,” of not only trauma (helplessness and terror of violent dying), but of death itself — the irreversible loss of someone loved. So a violent dying narrative includes at least three unbearable narrative elements — helplessness, terror and death itself. This lecture will present a preliminary model of restorative retelling, a therapeutic approach to this narrative paradox.

Dr. Edward (Ted) Rynearson is a semi-retired clinical psychiatrist from Seattle, Washington, where he founded the section of psychiatry at the Mason Clinic over 30 years ago. In addition to full-time clinical practice, he has served on the faculty of the University of Washington as a clinical professor of psychiatry. For over 20 years, Dr. Rynearson has maintained a particular clinical and research focus on the effects of violent death on family members published in clinical papers, book chapters and two books entitled Retelling Violent Death and Violent Death: Resilience and Intervention Beyond the Crisis.


Heaven and Hell as Prospects for a GLBT Afterlife
Robert Minor, PhD
Opinion polls indicate that anywhere from 54 to 85% of Americans believe in hell. An afterlife of heaven or hell is a com­mon and persistent thread in the prospects of many in the US. Even many who have rejected religions that teach such prospects still harbor deep, lingering fears and ways of thinking about their own death related to what they have outwardly rejected. Without asking about the truth or falsity of these beliefs, Dr. Minor discusses how they function, where they get their emotional power, and why they persist as ways of conceptualizing and feeling about what awaits one at death. Though they continue to dominate the ways of thinking of the afterlife for many, they have had particular significance in the discussions of LGBT people by religious people, and in the responses of LGBT people. How does one relate to such persistence of doctrines, understand it and be a positive counselor when these issues surface and trouble clients? How does one relate to them oneself?

Robert N. Minor, PhD, has been speaking, consulting and leading workshops for 15 years. Dr. Minor is a national resource for information on gender issues, homophobia, racism and gay/straight relationships for organizations, businesses, educational institutions and media outlets such as NBC and USA Today. He is a professor of religious studies at the University of Kansas, where he has taught for over 30 years and served as chair of the Religious Studies Department for six years.
Dr. Minor is the author of eight books, on topics ranging from religious thought and practice in South Asia and their relation­ships to culture, to his current research on gender studies and the relationships of religion, gender and sexuality. He also writes two popular columns — one a monthly column of analysis and opinion entitled “Minor Details” on issues affecting the progressive and gay communities; the second, “Romance and Dating,” a bimonthly column for Baby Boomers on dating, romance and relationships for the popular Web site, 50PlusPrime.com.