VFTS 2021 3| Robert Neimeyer | Expressive Arts and Grief

Robert A. Neimeyer, PhD, is Professor Emeritus of the Department of Psychology, University of Memphis, and maintains an active consulting and coaching practice.

He also directs the Portland Institute for Loss and Transition, which provides online and onsite training internationally in grief therapy.

Since completing his doctoral training at the University of Nebraska in 1982, he has conducted extensive research on the topics of death, grief, loss, and suicide intervention. Neimeyer has published 30 books, including Techniques of Grief Therapy: Assessment and Intervention and Grief and the Expressive Arts: Practices for Creating Meaning, the latter with Barbara Thompson.

The author of over 500 articles and book chapters, he is currently working to advance a more adequate theory of grieving as a meaning-making process, both in his published work and through his frequent professional workshops for national and international audiences.

Neimeyer is the Editor of the respected international journal, Death Studies, and served as President of the Association for Death Education and Counseling. In recognition of his scholarly contributions, he has been granted the Distinguished Research Award, the Distinguished Teaching Award, and the Eminent Faculty Award by the University of Memphis, elected Chair of the International Work Group on Death, Dying, and Bereavement, and given the Research Recognition, Clinical Practice and Lifetime Achievement Awards by the Association for Death Education and Counseling. Most recently, he has received the Phoenix Award: Rising to the Service of Humanity from the MISS Foundation, been given ADEC’s Lifetime Achievement Award, and been recognized as an Honored Associate of the Viktor Frankl Association for his lifetime contributions to the study of meaning. 

Additionally, he is a published poet. 

In this episode, Robert and I discuss the need for additional education to be included in the training of therapists on the topic of grief and loss. He shares his thoughts about how
"slowing down" in therapy actually speeds things up to create transformational moments with clients. 

He additionally shares about the work of his colleagues and himself providing experiential training on expressive methods for transformative meaning-making in grief work at the Portland Institute for Loss and Transition. 

We talk a bit about the Grief Track (10 workshops) being offered at the upcoming Expressive Therapies Summit, Los Angeles, event. He will specifically be teaching on Writing Through Bereavement: Reconstructing Meaning & Loss at the event. 

Resources:

https://www.portlandinstitute.org/
http://summit.expressivemedia.org/
The Art of Longing: Selected Poems by Neimeyer 
Techniques of Grief Therapy: Assessment and Intervention
Grief and the Expressive Arts: Practices for Creating Meaning