My book on bereavement has been translated into Greek! Thanks to the work of my generous Greek colleagues, it will now reach another audience.
In English it’s called “Writing the Self in Bereavement” (Routledge, 2021). In Greek the apt title is, “Grief and Therapeutic Writing” (2025).
Here is the foreword to the Greek version.
Foreword
We recently met Reinekke Lengelle at a conference on the extensions and applications of the concept of the dialogical self in psychotherapy, among other cognitive and research fields. We were moved by her story, but also by the way she told it and presented her book to the public. We sought out more information about her and her journey, and were delighted to discover that she is a poet and playwright, as well as an academic who deals with the power of writing. Our desire to include her work in the book series of “Logo Psychis” and Pedio Publications was born from that first contact.
This desire became a certainty while reading her book, as we were flooded with a deep sense of relief and freedom. The models of grief that have dominated scientific discussion in recent decades have helped us in our psychotherapeutic work and teaching, to describe possible internal processes of the bereaved. However, they also have all the disadvantages of models that, through their generalization, understand the stages as objective realities and not as compasses that lead to an understanding of the uniqueness of each individual human experience.
Lengelle is spontaneous, honest, sharing her personal story, but also the experiences of other people in relation to the process of mourning, with immediacy, without embellishment and in constant open negotiation with social inhibitions and prejudices. We were surprised to find, when we breathlessly finished reading the book, that, although it deals with a sad topic in such a confessional way, the feeling that we had was light, warm and optimistic.
The openness with which she speaks about all aspects of her experience exudes genuine acceptance, inner security, tenderness for every vulnerable and dark side, it moves deeply, touches sensitivities, activates internal dialogues, existential questions and works as a cathartic, transformative… The very experience of reading becomes the experiential confirmation that writing has a therapeutic effect!
The process of writing the book, which resembles keeping a diary, also records all the guilt and anxiety that accompanied each decision of the author regarding what to include. A multitude of questions overwhelmed her: “Do I have the right to be angry with the person with whom I shared a large part of my life and who is now dead?” “Do I have the right to still desire him romantically?” “When do I have the right to start sharing my life with a new partner?” Although the book talks about the loss of a partner, readers will recognize common experiences with all forms of loss. We hope that readers will let this book touch their sensitive strings and enjoy it as much as we did!
Athina Androutsopoulou – Tsambika Bafiti
October 2025
This publication is a collaboration between the Greek publishing house Pedio and the Institute Logo Psychis (Institute for Education and Research in Systemic Psychotherapy).
