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Family stress specialist Pauline Boss to discuss 'ambiguous loss' on Wednesday, Oct. 30

Jake Erickson '06 and Nancy J. Ashmore
October 24, 2002

What happens when a family does not experience closure after the death or loss of a loved one? What is ?loss?? University of Minnesota professor Pauline Boss will address these questions and more in a lecture sponsored by the St. Olaf College Psychology Department. The talk, ?Ambiguous Loss: From Science to Practice after 9/11,? will take place on Wednesday, Oct. 30, at 7 p.m. in the Black and Gold Ballroom in Buntrock Commons. It is free and open to the public.

Boss, a member of the Department of Family and Social Sciences at the University of Minnesota, is past president of the National Council on Family Relations and a psychotherapist in private practice. Drawing upon her year-long experiences in New York City working with the families of the missing, she will discuss how psychologists are helping people there cope with trauma and loss in a post-9/11 world. How does this relate to people outside of New York? Boss plans to address that question as well. ?While I will talk about losing someone psychologically or physically, I will also talk about how to cope with the overall ambiguity that is increasingly part of post 9/11 life ? even here in the Midwest,? Boss says.

Boss has earned a variety of distinctions for her ground-breaking research on family stress and ambiguous loss. She has been elected as a Fellow in three different organizations (the American Psychological Association, the American Association of Marriage and Family Therapy, and the National Council on Research Consortium III on Diversity). Most recently she was awarded the distinguished Ernest Burgess Award, presented in recognition of her excellence in research and theory development for strengthening families. Boss is also the author of Ambiguous Loss, a 1999 book that focused on learning to live with unresolved grief.

Dana Gross, associate professor of psychology, met Boss last May. She was impressed: ?Even though St. Olaf seems so far away from New York City, I thought that psychology majors ? as well as the rest of the community ? would benefit from knowing about the way in which one Minnesota psychologist has made a difference in the lives of so many who are dealing with the events they never could have anticipated.?

Contact Nancy J. Ashmore at 507-786-3315 or ashmore@stolaf.edu.