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Necessary Losses: The Loves, Illusions, Dependencies, and Impossible Expectations That All of Us Have to Give Up in Order to Grow
From grief and mourning to aging and relationships, poet and Redbook contributor Judith Viorst presents a thoughtful and researched study in this examination of love, loss, and letting go.
Drawing on psychoanalysis, literature, and personal experience, Necessary Losses is a philosophy for understanding and accepting life’s inevitabilities.
In Necessary Losses , Judith Viorst turns her considerable talents to a serious and far-reaching subject: how we grow and change through the losses that are a certain and necessary part of life. She argues persuasively that through the loss of our mothers’ protection, the loss of the impossible expectations we bring to relationships, the loss of our younger selves, and the loss of our loved ones through separation and death, we gain deeper perspective, true maturity, and fuller wisdom about life. She has written a book that is both life affirming and life changing.
Drawing on psychoanalysis, literature, and personal experience, Necessary Losses is a philosophy for understanding and accepting life’s inevitabilities.
In Necessary Losses , Judith Viorst turns her considerable talents to a serious and far-reaching subject: how we grow and change through the losses that are a certain and necessary part of life. She argues persuasively that through the loss of our mothers’ protection, the loss of the impossible expectations we bring to relationships, the loss of our younger selves, and the loss of our loved ones through separation and death, we gain deeper perspective, true maturity, and fuller wisdom about life. She has written a book that is both life affirming and life changing.
448 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1986
666 people are currently reading
5853 people want to read
About the author
Judith Viorst
118 books807 followersJudith Viorst is an American writer, newspaper journalist, and psychoanalysis researcher. She is known for her humorous observational poetry and for her children's literature. This includes The Tenth Good Thing About Barney (about the death of a pet) and the Alexander series of short picture books, which includes Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day (1972), which has sold over two million copies.
Viorst is a 1952 graduate of the Newark College of Arts and Sciences at Rutgers University in Newark, New Jersey. In 1968, she signed the "Writers and Editors War Tax Protest" pledge, vowing to refuse tax payments in protest against the Vietnam War. In the latter part of the 1970s, after two decades of writing for children and adults, Viorst turned to the study of Freudian psychology. In 1981, she became a research graduate at Washington Psychoanalytic Institute after six years of study.
Viorst is a 1952 graduate of the Newark College of Arts and Sciences at Rutgers University in Newark, New Jersey. In 1968, she signed the "Writers and Editors War Tax Protest" pledge, vowing to refuse tax payments in protest against the Vietnam War. In the latter part of the 1970s, after two decades of writing for children and adults, Viorst turned to the study of Freudian psychology. In 1981, she became a research graduate at Washington Psychoanalytic Institute after six years of study.
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February 26, 2025
TRAUMA IS A FACT OF LIFE. IT DOES NOT, HOWEVER HAVE TO BE A LIFE SENTENCE.
Peter A. Levine
BLESSED IS HE WHO HAS A SOUL.
BLESSED IS HE WHO HAS NO SOUL.
BUT WOE, WOE TO THE ONE WHO HAS IT IN EMBRYO.
George Gurdjieff
The weight of buried trauma CAN be lifted. I know, because I have processed a lot more of it since the advent of COVID-19.
Wow. I hate to go to more extremes than even I am ever Normally capable of, but to be perfectly honest with you, THIS BIG, FAT BOOK BLEW ME AWAY.
It’s that good...
You know, sometimes the most bitter pills to swallow do us most good.
So it was with this book.
Want to think in a totally Adult and Obstinately Responsible Way? This’ll do it!
But yes, yes, I know - we don’t like to lose our illusions. As the great R.D.Laing said, we are all like newborns who want to hang on to our nourishing placentas. Laing says that wound sometimes never heals!
You know, an ancient Zen monk once asked his revered Master, “What will I be like once I am Enlightened?”
“LIKE A BULL DOWN A MOUNTAIN!!!” the Master thundered back.
My old friend Ray was like that Bull, perpetually charging down at his friends from atop a mountain...
Ray, though, had no choice in the matter. He had Lost ALL his illusions - in the Korean War.
Ray was my neighbour-and-close-friend’s brother-in-law. Ray was a badly beat-up vet, but he always Sat High in the Saddle.
A PROUDLY grown-up Guy.
He DWARFED me and my buddy in Moral Stature and maturity, but strangely enough... he liked, respected and admired us - for the lines of trauma and discipline and wear that were forever etched on our faces.
His wife, however, on one of the social occasions we attended, tried to lighten the general mood a bit.
She knew Ray was carrying his enormous weight of memories and we, Ours.
So I played the clown with my neighbour that night - and I felt Ray start to distance himself immediately.
Misery not only Loves a commiserating kind of company - it requires it. I lost his loyalty at that moment. I had shifted out of character.
So perhaps I lost a brother-in-arms that night, but it‘s probably just as well...
Ray, like this dose of reality in this book, was pretty intense. Good in small doses.But trauma can infect others - one reason his wife willfully remains so defiantly bright and bon vivant.
You gotta be like that sometimes, on social occasions.
So I read this book, and discovered what I SHOULDA done in the weeks that folllowed was get back into Ray’s good graces.
I shoulda helped MYSELF. This book Woulda REALLY HELPED. But it was by then too late, alas...
You know, the November before he died - in his sleep, like a true hero who’s seen it all and done it all (and all for the good) - he got my pal to stand in for his sick ex-military sidekick, selling Poppies with him at Wal-Mart, after I (alas!) had taken the right of first refusal.
My friend, upon arrival at Wal-Mart, pulled up a chair.
Ray glowered. “Trash the chair! REAL MEN STAND!”
You gotta understand, Ray then was approaching his ninetieth year. He was Old Age Ain’t For Sissies Incarnate.
And so’s this book.
That grim grey day, I had been too lost in my own pain to STAND UP with Ray for two little hours.
But Ms Viorst, unlike Ray, leads us much more slowly and gracefully to do exactly that. To learn to Stand in Our Pain.
She’ll show you how to dissect it, and make you intimately INTERESTED in your Own Vivisection. Cause it will show you WHY you deserve a second chance!
We ALL do.
Pain, she tells us, can be traced to our trauma as infants. And don’t kid yourself. We’ve ALL got it in truckloads.
It’s one thing to say Keep Calm and Carry On when everything’s rosy, but when a Catyclysmic Cauchemar is tearing your beating heart out of your rib cavity, what d’ya do?
Number one, you DISSECT it. Break it down and link it up with the known traumatic memories you have to face daily - don’t evade it (and don’t be afraid to ask for help from a professional). Meds help.
Number two, you’ll see with more clarity that its PHYSICAL manifestations begin to take centre stage in your life. Treat them appropriately, with the help of your family doctor.
And, number three, PEACE will start to envelope your inner being. EXPAND that well-being to help those around you. “We ALL have buried trauma - but it is NOT a life sentence!”
Forewarned is forearmed, and this book will give you all the ammunition you’ll need in your hand-to-hand combat with your False Self - if you can Stand the painful honesty.
Viorst tells us, though, that there’s a Buried Treasure beneath that heap of rags we call a life...
And it HEALS.
At the end of the longest river
Under the hidden waterfall...
Children’s voices in the orchard
Between the blossom and the seed time...
Quick now, here now, always -
Pity the poor lost time stretching before and after!
Why NOT break the chains? Why NOT climb out of the Rut?
Real Freedom awaits.
Peter A. Levine
BLESSED IS HE WHO HAS A SOUL.
BLESSED IS HE WHO HAS NO SOUL.
BUT WOE, WOE TO THE ONE WHO HAS IT IN EMBRYO.
George Gurdjieff
The weight of buried trauma CAN be lifted. I know, because I have processed a lot more of it since the advent of COVID-19.
Wow. I hate to go to more extremes than even I am ever Normally capable of, but to be perfectly honest with you, THIS BIG, FAT BOOK BLEW ME AWAY.
It’s that good...
You know, sometimes the most bitter pills to swallow do us most good.
So it was with this book.
Want to think in a totally Adult and Obstinately Responsible Way? This’ll do it!
But yes, yes, I know - we don’t like to lose our illusions. As the great R.D.Laing said, we are all like newborns who want to hang on to our nourishing placentas. Laing says that wound sometimes never heals!
You know, an ancient Zen monk once asked his revered Master, “What will I be like once I am Enlightened?”
“LIKE A BULL DOWN A MOUNTAIN!!!” the Master thundered back.
My old friend Ray was like that Bull, perpetually charging down at his friends from atop a mountain...
Ray, though, had no choice in the matter. He had Lost ALL his illusions - in the Korean War.
Ray was my neighbour-and-close-friend’s brother-in-law. Ray was a badly beat-up vet, but he always Sat High in the Saddle.
A PROUDLY grown-up Guy.
He DWARFED me and my buddy in Moral Stature and maturity, but strangely enough... he liked, respected and admired us - for the lines of trauma and discipline and wear that were forever etched on our faces.
His wife, however, on one of the social occasions we attended, tried to lighten the general mood a bit.
She knew Ray was carrying his enormous weight of memories and we, Ours.
So I played the clown with my neighbour that night - and I felt Ray start to distance himself immediately.
Misery not only Loves a commiserating kind of company - it requires it. I lost his loyalty at that moment. I had shifted out of character.
So perhaps I lost a brother-in-arms that night, but it‘s probably just as well...
Ray, like this dose of reality in this book, was pretty intense. Good in small doses.But trauma can infect others - one reason his wife willfully remains so defiantly bright and bon vivant.
You gotta be like that sometimes, on social occasions.
So I read this book, and discovered what I SHOULDA done in the weeks that folllowed was get back into Ray’s good graces.
I shoulda helped MYSELF. This book Woulda REALLY HELPED. But it was by then too late, alas...
You know, the November before he died - in his sleep, like a true hero who’s seen it all and done it all (and all for the good) - he got my pal to stand in for his sick ex-military sidekick, selling Poppies with him at Wal-Mart, after I (alas!) had taken the right of first refusal.
My friend, upon arrival at Wal-Mart, pulled up a chair.
Ray glowered. “Trash the chair! REAL MEN STAND!”
You gotta understand, Ray then was approaching his ninetieth year. He was Old Age Ain’t For Sissies Incarnate.
And so’s this book.
That grim grey day, I had been too lost in my own pain to STAND UP with Ray for two little hours.
But Ms Viorst, unlike Ray, leads us much more slowly and gracefully to do exactly that. To learn to Stand in Our Pain.
She’ll show you how to dissect it, and make you intimately INTERESTED in your Own Vivisection. Cause it will show you WHY you deserve a second chance!
We ALL do.
Pain, she tells us, can be traced to our trauma as infants. And don’t kid yourself. We’ve ALL got it in truckloads.
It’s one thing to say Keep Calm and Carry On when everything’s rosy, but when a Catyclysmic Cauchemar is tearing your beating heart out of your rib cavity, what d’ya do?
Number one, you DISSECT it. Break it down and link it up with the known traumatic memories you have to face daily - don’t evade it (and don’t be afraid to ask for help from a professional). Meds help.
Number two, you’ll see with more clarity that its PHYSICAL manifestations begin to take centre stage in your life. Treat them appropriately, with the help of your family doctor.
And, number three, PEACE will start to envelope your inner being. EXPAND that well-being to help those around you. “We ALL have buried trauma - but it is NOT a life sentence!”
Forewarned is forearmed, and this book will give you all the ammunition you’ll need in your hand-to-hand combat with your False Self - if you can Stand the painful honesty.
Viorst tells us, though, that there’s a Buried Treasure beneath that heap of rags we call a life...
And it HEALS.
At the end of the longest river
Under the hidden waterfall...
Children’s voices in the orchard
Between the blossom and the seed time...
Quick now, here now, always -
Pity the poor lost time stretching before and after!
Why NOT break the chains? Why NOT climb out of the Rut?
Real Freedom awaits.
August 12, 2017
A good book that confronts loss and shows that to enjoy a meaningful life with deep relationships, we must accept grief and loss as emotions worth experiencing. Our culture shies away from loss, perhaps for good reason, as death and separation evoke unpleasant feelings. But Judith Viorst contends that accepting loss as necessary allows us to better appreciate and cope with life's joys and hardships. She extends this message beyond physical death to address other important forms of loss, like the loss of the idealistic expectations we have for our friends, children, and partners. As someone who sees that people often act in certain ways because of a fear of loss, I appreciate how Viorst walks us through several varieties of loss - with separate sections about friends, marriage, death, etc. - in compassionate and intelligent ways. I suspect that this book will give people interesting insights into their own behavior and their past relationships, as it did for me.
I reduce my star rating because Viorst includes some outdated and heteronormative concepts of gender and attraction. This happens more toward the beginning of Necessary Losses and got better by the end. It intrigues me to think that I may have given this book a higher rating if I had read it 15 or even 10 years ago, but I feel glad that society has progressed to the point where I can recognize problematic themes in past psychologists' work (e.g., homosexuality as an abnormal feature as conceptualized by Freud). Viorst approaches some good ideas about gender - such that girls get taught to value relationships more than boys, not that that is biologically ingrained - but does not develop these insights all the way. Still, I would recommend this book - especially its latter half - to anyone interested in learning about loss and grief.
I reduce my star rating because Viorst includes some outdated and heteronormative concepts of gender and attraction. This happens more toward the beginning of Necessary Losses and got better by the end. It intrigues me to think that I may have given this book a higher rating if I had read it 15 or even 10 years ago, but I feel glad that society has progressed to the point where I can recognize problematic themes in past psychologists' work (e.g., homosexuality as an abnormal feature as conceptualized by Freud). Viorst approaches some good ideas about gender - such that girls get taught to value relationships more than boys, not that that is biologically ingrained - but does not develop these insights all the way. Still, I would recommend this book - especially its latter half - to anyone interested in learning about loss and grief.
April 15, 2014
I got 200 pages in to this book, and I couldn't stand it any further.
I wanted to like it ... The intro seemed exciting, and I eagerly dove in full of high hopes.
But dear god.... Every issue in life does not go back to wanting to have sex with your parents, or unresolved mommy and daddy issues.
I haven't lost friendships over unresolved homosexuality issues from Oedipal issues from when I was a toddler... I don't have anxiety because of going to day care.
Give me a break --- this book is full of nonsensical Freudian theory, which has largely been shown to be a great period in psychological history, but has no ability to be proven... Therefore, not good science.
This book doesn't explain loss at all!!! GAH!!!
I can't believe it's so highly rated and people say they found it so useful... I don't understand at all.
I wanted to like it ... The intro seemed exciting, and I eagerly dove in full of high hopes.
But dear god.... Every issue in life does not go back to wanting to have sex with your parents, or unresolved mommy and daddy issues.
I haven't lost friendships over unresolved homosexuality issues from Oedipal issues from when I was a toddler... I don't have anxiety because of going to day care.
Give me a break --- this book is full of nonsensical Freudian theory, which has largely been shown to be a great period in psychological history, but has no ability to be proven... Therefore, not good science.
This book doesn't explain loss at all!!! GAH!!!
I can't believe it's so highly rated and people say they found it so useful... I don't understand at all.
December 10, 2008
Number 3 on my top ten books that most formed my worldview. Ms. Viorst brought me face to face with the normal (required?) speed bumps in the road of life. It was through this book that the concept of "process" became clear to me. Because we are born to aspire to achievement and recognition we are creatures of hope and when it happens, as it most surely will, that the edifice of our hopes comes crashing in on us we each, in our own time, in our own way and by our own initiative must undertake a process to recover from our loss of expectation and hope. None of us are exempt from this sequence of defeat and recovery, but hopefully, through experience (or from this book) we can make it more understandable and easier on subesquent occassions. The author's skill in presenting the normal and expected occurences of loss in our lives is comforting as it is a process that is by its nature very lonely. I'm sure I have given three or four dozen copies away to friends in need.
October 28, 2016
Judith Viorst fascinates me. She's currently 85 and looks about 70. She's had a writing career that has spanned just about all genres, and she then decided, just for kicks, to study psychoanalysis for 6 years in middle age and become a psychoanalytical researcher.
So, she not only has all of those brilliant books for kids that I grew up reading, but she's a poet, a fiction writer, and, oh yeah, she also writes non-fiction psychology books.
And here's the best part. . . her psychology books, well, at least this one, have a literary quality to them. Meaning, she's not just suggesting how Freud thinks your mama might have messed you up, she's throwing in poetry and literature and mythology as well. When she made a reference to a Maurice Sendak book in the first few pages, I knew we were going to get along well.
It's still tough to read about what we do with our loss and abandonment and grief, and I never fly through that type of material, nor should I. I had to take it in small doses and ease my way through it, but I think her non-judgemental approach, seasoned writing style and literary references become the spoonful of sugar that helps the medicine go down.
So, she not only has all of those brilliant books for kids that I grew up reading, but she's a poet, a fiction writer, and, oh yeah, she also writes non-fiction psychology books.
And here's the best part. . . her psychology books, well, at least this one, have a literary quality to them. Meaning, she's not just suggesting how Freud thinks your mama might have messed you up, she's throwing in poetry and literature and mythology as well. When she made a reference to a Maurice Sendak book in the first few pages, I knew we were going to get along well.
It's still tough to read about what we do with our loss and abandonment and grief, and I never fly through that type of material, nor should I. I had to take it in small doses and ease my way through it, but I think her non-judgemental approach, seasoned writing style and literary references become the spoonful of sugar that helps the medicine go down.
September 2, 2013
The main idea of the book is that in letting go of some things we make valuable gains throughout the stages of our lives. The author starts with childhood and the separation we make from our parents. Some people suffer from premature separation from parents and so the author describes some of the emotional consequences of that because it affects how well they deal with loss in later stages of development. She talks about growing up and leaving home. She includes a whole chapter on fantasies and how they are substitutes for what we must out of necessity lose. She also suggests in this chapter that healthy adults learn to accept reality. She has an exceptional chapter on friendship. She talks about marriage and the loss of a marriage. She has a chapter on grieving the loss of a person and a couple chapters on aging/death as we must give up some things in order to accept the limitations of aging.
Here's a quote from the book's conclusion that I liked because it summarized the intent of the author so well:
“In thinking about development as a lifelong series of necessary losses -- of necessary losses and subsequent gains -- I am constantly struck by the fact that in human experiences opposites frequently converge. I have found that little can be understood in terms of ‘eithers’ or ‘ors’. I have found that the answer to the question “Is it this or that?’ is often ‘Both.’
That we love and we hate the same person.
That the same person -- us for instance -- is both good and bad.
That although we are driven by forces that are beyond our control and awareness, we are also the active authors of our fate.
And that, although the course of our life is marked with repetition and continuity, it also is remarkably open to change.
For yes, it is true that as long as we live we may keep repeating the patterns established in childhood. It is true that the present is powerfully shaped by the past. But it also is true that the circumstances of every stage of development can shake up and revise the old arrangements. And it’s true that insight at any age can free us from singing the same sad songs again.
Thus, although our early experiences are decisive, some of these decisions can be reversed. We can’t understand our history in terms of continuity or change. We must include both.
And we can’t understand our history unless we recognize that it is comprised of both outer and inner realities. For what we call our ‘experiences’ include not only what happens to us out there, but how we interpret what happens to us out there. A kiss is not just a kiss -- it may feel like sweet intimacy; it may feel like outrageous intrusion. It may even be only a fantasy in our mind. Each of us has an inner response to the outer events of our life. We must include both.”
pp. 326-327
I didn't like the chapters on sexuality/orientation or the many references to Freud's theories.
Here's a quote from the book's conclusion that I liked because it summarized the intent of the author so well:
“In thinking about development as a lifelong series of necessary losses -- of necessary losses and subsequent gains -- I am constantly struck by the fact that in human experiences opposites frequently converge. I have found that little can be understood in terms of ‘eithers’ or ‘ors’. I have found that the answer to the question “Is it this or that?’ is often ‘Both.’
That we love and we hate the same person.
That the same person -- us for instance -- is both good and bad.
That although we are driven by forces that are beyond our control and awareness, we are also the active authors of our fate.
And that, although the course of our life is marked with repetition and continuity, it also is remarkably open to change.
For yes, it is true that as long as we live we may keep repeating the patterns established in childhood. It is true that the present is powerfully shaped by the past. But it also is true that the circumstances of every stage of development can shake up and revise the old arrangements. And it’s true that insight at any age can free us from singing the same sad songs again.
Thus, although our early experiences are decisive, some of these decisions can be reversed. We can’t understand our history in terms of continuity or change. We must include both.
And we can’t understand our history unless we recognize that it is comprised of both outer and inner realities. For what we call our ‘experiences’ include not only what happens to us out there, but how we interpret what happens to us out there. A kiss is not just a kiss -- it may feel like sweet intimacy; it may feel like outrageous intrusion. It may even be only a fantasy in our mind. Each of us has an inner response to the outer events of our life. We must include both.”
pp. 326-327
I didn't like the chapters on sexuality/orientation or the many references to Freud's theories.
July 6, 2017
Ho boy, this helped me discover that I'm really not into Freudian psychoanalysis.
This has such high ratings and I was in the mood for a good self-help book, but psychoanalysis just seems like a lot of baseless patriarchal conjecture to me. Plus, all the gender/sexuality stuff made it feel pretty dated (Viorst: we're all basically bisexual, but hetero=evolved and homo=stuck in a earlier Oedipal stage).
I didn't read all the way to the end, but well enough over half that I felt like I'd gotten the picture of her philosophy. I want to find something either 1) a little more evidence based or 2) that hits me in the heart a little harder.
This has such high ratings and I was in the mood for a good self-help book, but psychoanalysis just seems like a lot of baseless patriarchal conjecture to me. Plus, all the gender/sexuality stuff made it feel pretty dated (Viorst: we're all basically bisexual, but hetero=evolved and homo=stuck in a earlier Oedipal stage).
I didn't read all the way to the end, but well enough over half that I felt like I'd gotten the picture of her philosophy. I want to find something either 1) a little more evidence based or 2) that hits me in the heart a little harder.
July 3, 2014
I unequivocally recommend this book to everyone, at whatever age. It was especially poignant for me to read it just as I resigned from full time work and started social security. I suffer the loss of a job I loved to do and people I loved to work with, of a beautiful building with all my beloved books. But in giving up, in losing, I gain free time to do things I've wanted to do forever, to spend time with family whom I love more than life. But as author Judith Viorst delineates, there are losses associated with every age and season. We must all go through these periods of giving up in order to grow and go through the next stage.
June 7, 2016
Judith Viorst did an excellent job defining and elaborating on the many losses we face in life through change, growing, and even death, and how different people deal with all. It helped me understand that there is a whole range of "normal", depending on our history, personality, environment, etc. what one may take in stride and even grow from, may knock another to their knees. Even the 5 stages of grief we hear so much about, it not so cut and dried. There is no formula, timetable or anything predictable as to how long one should be in any of the various stages. I learned quite a bit from this book, and will never look at loss in the same way.
July 14, 2024
Doczłapałam do końca...
Ta książka ma wiele przydatnych fragmentów. Ładnie rozpracowuje utraty, szczególnie ciężko przechodzi się przez rozdziały o śmierci swojej i bliskich. Można z niej naprawdę sporo wynieść, ale ma też trochę momentów, które brzmią jak totalne freudowskie pierdolenie. Więc powiem, że polecam, ale trzeba czytać uważnie, wybrać sobie to, co do nas przemawia i odrzucić babole.
Ta książka ma wiele przydatnych fragmentów. Ładnie rozpracowuje utraty, szczególnie ciężko przechodzi się przez rozdziały o śmierci swojej i bliskich. Można z niej naprawdę sporo wynieść, ale ma też trochę momentów, które brzmią jak totalne freudowskie pierdolenie. Więc powiem, że polecam, ale trzeba czytać uważnie, wybrać sobie to, co do nas przemawia i odrzucić babole.
Read
July 20, 2025dnf nie do przetrawienia , BEŁKOT
September 14, 2009
I finally finished this book! It's one of those that you want to read slowly because it's somewhat dense even though it's written for a lay audience -- there's so much to mull over.
Yes, this book is by the same Judith Viorst who wrote children's favorite, "Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day." But this book is definitely for grownups who want to learn more about being grownups. Viorst chronicles the many beliefs we have to let go of in order to become fully mature, responsible (and happy) adults, such as the conscious (or unconscious) belief that someone will come rescue us from our problems. ("Oh, if only I whine about this asshole at work long enough, someone will fire him!" Or, "I am going to complain about my husband's bad habit to my friends and maybe one day he will stop.") Yep, it's time to put on your big girl panties and deal with it, ALL OF IT, on your own. Ain't no Prince Charming or Surrogate Mama out there to fix it, y'all. But Viorst delivers it in a compassionate way that helps you get there if you aren't already. Also a very helpful chapter on coming to terms with your own mortality.
A must for anyone considering a career in therapy.
Yes, this book is by the same Judith Viorst who wrote children's favorite, "Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day." But this book is definitely for grownups who want to learn more about being grownups. Viorst chronicles the many beliefs we have to let go of in order to become fully mature, responsible (and happy) adults, such as the conscious (or unconscious) belief that someone will come rescue us from our problems. ("Oh, if only I whine about this asshole at work long enough, someone will fire him!" Or, "I am going to complain about my husband's bad habit to my friends and maybe one day he will stop.") Yep, it's time to put on your big girl panties and deal with it, ALL OF IT, on your own. Ain't no Prince Charming or Surrogate Mama out there to fix it, y'all. But Viorst delivers it in a compassionate way that helps you get there if you aren't already. Also a very helpful chapter on coming to terms with your own mortality.
A must for anyone considering a career in therapy.
September 13, 2008
Wow. This is really a terribly depressing book. The author describes all of the "necessary losses" we must endure in life but doesn't offer any insight about how to deal with it. She basically just says, "Loss is the nature of life. Suck it up." Ke-rist. If I'm going to read 327 pages about the things that I will have to lose in life, could you at least offer up a little hope?
Also, she bases her ideas on Freudian philosophy. If you ask me, Freud was a KOOK.
I did however learn that I tend towards indiscriminate and excessive neurotic guilt. I need to lose that.
Also, she bases her ideas on Freudian philosophy. If you ask me, Freud was a KOOK.
I did however learn that I tend towards indiscriminate and excessive neurotic guilt. I need to lose that.
November 17, 2012
NECESSARY LOSSES reads like a textbook but serves as a bible. It took far too long to complete it, yet I had to digest the material bit by bit in order to experience the wealth of material to the fullest. Judith Viorst allowed me to revisit my past, birth to adulthood, where I confronted "demons" and found consolation and truth.From adulthood I revisited the childbearing years with all the confusion and delight those times entailed. Finally I have confronted my twilight with the sensitive support of the author. I have asked the questions and sought the answers that will be my future. As a sixty year old woman, Judith's work took me "time traveling" where I confronted pain, pity, pleasure and purpose. It will remain on my bookshelf and will be reviewed in my private hours as I journey on. It will also serve as a resource for my children, three young adults starting out on their own in a challenging time.Understanding and accepting life's necessary losses is indispensable...
September 18, 2025
Ah, man, where do I start with this book or a review thereof…
This book was definitely not what I had expected. To start with, the very title Necessary Losses threw me off–“loss”, I think, is most often in reference to death: “I’m so sorry for your loss.” It sounded like a book on death and grieving thereof, and as someone who has not lost anyone important to me, it didn’t seem like a book I would get much out of.
Then there was the psychoanalytic element. I’ve been interested in psychology since probably fifth grade, but I swore off books written before the turn of the millennium, especially psychoanalytically-oriented books, by the time I was 14. As a teen, I found psychoanalytic theory maddening in its obscure abstraction, alienating in its overinterpretation, bizarre in its focus on sex. In some ways, it felt more related to the artistic metaphor of poetry, perhaps, or the improvable relativism of philosophy. Most of all, I disliked its distinct lack of empiricism. Could there be a collective Jungian unconscious? Maybe, maybe not; we have no way of proving it.
This book was written in 1986, handily violating my before the turn of the millennium rule. It also opened up with psychoanalytic theory. Yikes. I read the first few chapters about oneness with one’s mother and the womb and all that grimacing. I said I’d read the book, so I was going to finish it, but what exactly had I signed myself up for? This was going to be a slog. I think my eyes rolled back into my head about 720 degrees when she referenced orgasming representing oneness with one’s mother.
But … I persisted onward, trying to find some value in the book. Surely there must be something here I was missing? I tried to be less judgmental towards the more classically Freudian elements. I challenged myself to look for metaphor instead, to take things less literally.
I don’t know where the shift occurred, exactly, but something finally clicked, and I instead began to enjoy the challenge of looking beyond the more literal psychoanalytic concepts to the broader existential meaning. While I am simply never going to get behind classically Freudian concepts from a literal sense, many of the concepts make total sense if looked at metaphorically: we don’t in childhood literally wish to “merge” with our mother, but we do have a profound, intense desire to be cared for, in a way that almost mimics a fusing: we can so desperately want our mother that we override her needs and superimpose ours on hers to be satisfied, or take upon her wants and needs as our own to achieve her love and acceptance. Nor is it a conscious process–few of our deepest needs are conscious and so plainly described. In a certain respect, the theory is like poetry: the meaning exists beyond the bare words on the page.
Honestly, even older theories that have aged poorly can still provide value, not unlike reading the Bible from an interpretive perspective. The Bible is unrealistic if you read it literally–the creation of the Earth in 7 days flies in the face of archaeological evidence, and there’s no way Adam lived to 930 years old. However, the Bible still imparts meaningful messages.
So, I’ll eat crow and admit 14-year-old me was wrong, and way too overly literal. (Unsurprisingly, 14-year-old me also didn't like poetry, so at least there’s a theme.)
So, that’s one aspect of the book review. Cool new area of psychology to explore that I now appreciate so much more!
As for the rest of the book … where to begin?
As noted earlier, Necessary Losses is a bit of a misnomer if you consider “losses” death. I think that’s the point of the book, though; death is a loss, but there are many such losses in our lifetime. Loss of childhood innocence. Loss of relationships we hold dear. Loss of unrealized dreams. To live is to experience loss, and, as such, losses are necessary. However, lest the book seem depressing, it’s actually not at all. To love is to lose; you can’t have one without the other, and the losses we incur give way to gains of their own. There is an obvious example, for instance, that accepting a relationship is over allows us to move on and find someone who is a better fit for us, and accepting death allows us to appreciate the current ephemeral moment more fully. But there are also more subtle losses and gains: for instance, growing up means giving up the bliss of childhood innocence, where anything was possible. By doing so, however, we gain the autonomy our dreaming childhood selves could never actualize. Perhaps we can’t grow up to be an astronaut, but a child also can’t be an astronaut, or a chef, or whatever in the current moment anyway. The adult self, however, can actualize the more realistic dreams. We all lose childhood innocence, but in return, we receive the empowerment of adult autonomy.
In some ways, I feel like Necessary Losses is a survey of the entire lifespan, exploring the losses and gains we grapple with at every lifestage. Babies struggle with the loss of their mother’s constant presence; they gain the ability to explore the world. Teens struggle with the loss of their childhood self, and forge a new one in its wake. Adults contend with the loss of aging parents, and gain perspective of the world and themselves.
The book is more than just a mere survey, though. A mere categorical description of these steps would be as reductionistic as the five stages of grief or the DSM itself. No, what actually makes the book fascinating is how she explores how we grapple with those losses. While loss is universal, the types of losses people experience are not, and they shape us indelibly and uniquely. The losses we experience, how we grapple with them, and the interplay between our fundamental biological hardwiring, society, the connections we have, and prior gains and losses all influence how we deal with and internalize the events of our lives.
But … I don’t think this book is one that is actually served well by a traditional book review. She makes a lot of great points throughout the book, but summarizing them would actually miss the larger value: its ability to articulate bits and pieces of your experience you kind of intuitively know or recognize, but had never named explicitly, as well as the capacity to inspire thought and reflection. When she went over how siblings form identities in opposition to one another as a way of “claiming turf,” I thought to my sister and I: how had we done so? I’d never thought about it, but when I thought more, I realized, we absolutely had done just that growing up, and my identity juxtaposed against my sister’s colored my childhood, and I would suspect my sister much the same.
There were many such instances, and I want to extract out instances like that and think upon them longer. What do my most shameful fantasies say about me? Who did (and do) I identify with beyond my parents, and what does that mean? What was my family’s stated identity? I think I have answers, but they require thought, and I’m sure I’ll learn some things about myself I didn’t know in the process.
I think all of this is also what makes the book eminently rereadable, in the way that few books are. I very, very, very rarely reread any books or rewatch movies. I always figure: what’s the point? I know what will happen if it’s a story, and what information will be conveyed if it’s fact-based. However, I would–and want to–read the book again, later. The lens through which one reads this book is our own lives, and our lives are constantly being rewritten��not just in the sense that we are living longer with more experiences to process, but also in that we are constantly re-evaluating our past selves and re-integrating and redefining. How I viewed my teens as a teen is different from how I viewed it in college, and now–the facts of what happened, the same, but the context, ever dynamic.
Indeed, I actually started this book in July, got about halfway through, and put it aside for life reasons. In the time in between, the ideas presented in the book had time to percolate. When I finally picked this book back up, I restarted from the beginning, and my experience of the book was different than the first attempt. (I can quantify this by looking at what I highlighted with different highlighters! Another testament to the book’s potency, as I never mark up what I read).
The book, of course, isn’t without its flaws. First and foremost: as much as I tried to get past the older psychoanalytic theory bits, some just … don’t square, no matter how I tried to look at them differently. I cannot get behind the Freudian concept of parents having incestuous feelings towards their children, for instance. If we’re gonna go all psychoanalysis here, I think Freud projected some of his own fantasies and neuroses onto the broader human psyche. I’m also okay dispensing with the penis envy theory altogether, unless it's in the context of how women might (understandably) envy the position of men in societies that subjugate them as less-than.
Secondly, while the book is really light on studies (which I think is actually a good thing), it does cite a study in which people got subliminal messages of “MOMMY AND ME” flashing on the screen and then went on to smoke less, be happier, etc, to profound effects. The high degree of efficacy sounded suspicious… if subliminal messaging was so effective, no one would need therapists or medication (good thing, too, a psyche so easily influenced by subliminal messaging sounds dystopian!). I think these studies were, in retrospect, probably good examples of psychology’s replicability crisis.
Thirdly, the book does show its age a bit. I feel like this is a bit of an unfair criticism as it’s certainly no fault of the book, and aside from a few areas (e.g., the origins of homosexuality, the role of women in the workplace and in marriage), it honestly does not detract from the book’s takeaways in any way. So much about the book captures the timeless nature of the human condition, in fact.
While I won’t attempt to summarize the book for the reasons I note earlier, I will at least highlight (some) of the book that really impressed me or inspired the most thought:
Childhood development
I downplayed the role of family and environment on behavior and personality for a long time. Yeah, being verbally and physically abused would shape you, no one would deny that. Beyond that, though, does it really have that big of an impact? What’s the point of talking about the past? You’re in control of your own behavior; don’t like your life, change it.
I don’t think it’s a waste of time anymore. As Viorst notes, we repeat the traumas and insecurities of our childhood over and over. As they say, those who don’t know history are doomed to repeat it. The influences of our childhood, intentional or otherwise, have an indelible impact on us.
On another note, childhood is indeed a loss. I remember realizing as an 11-year-old that pretend play was no longer much fun, and the unsettling realization I had that I was growing up, and I would soon never find pretend play fun again. I wasn’t sad … more almost a detached, disconnected feeling. But I do mourn childhood, on merit of the infinite possibility and joy. I love spending time with children now, because they bring me back to that moment in a way nothing else can.
Siblings
Viorst describes how siblings impact our development and identities. In dysfunctional families, siblings may band together, or the opposite. She specifically describes a phenomenon called “Hansel & Gretel,” wherein children develop close bonds as a protective mechanism. I’d never thought about it before, but I’ve seen this dynamic before. It’s fascinating to ponder what creates this dynamic vs. the one I’m more familiar with–siblings splitting into scattered atoms, almost repulsed by one another.
I think her point about siblings providing a unique connection point is very apt: no one knows the experience of being raised by your parents like your siblings, for better and for worse.
Friendships
Her description of the different types of friendships is probably the best I’ve seen, from the convenience friend to the activity friend to the crossroads friend and beyond. I can think of people in my life who fit into every single category, and while their relative importance varies, they are all important in having a meaningful sense of social connection.
I loved her section on how one of the losses of friendship is accepting … people won’t be perfect. Our friends will fail us and disappoint us and not provide everything we need, or have flaws we don’t like. Yet, at the same time, accepting what she calls “imperfect connections” for what they are gives us the gain of being accepted for our own flaws in turn, and the benefits those friendships provide us nonetheless.
As a formerly friendless kid who always preferred going deep and intense in friendships over casual acquaintanceship, I pined for the perfect friendship. Unsurprisingly, I found myself disappointed again and again. In recent years, I’ve grown to accept that not everyone will be “it”, but that doesn’t mean my friendship with them doesn’t have value. Accepting the limitations of friendships I wish were deeper has paradoxically allowed me to enjoy those friendships more, for what it is. I have a once-close high school friend that I now have little in common with. For a long time, I mourned our friendship and resented the distance. Now, however, I can accept them for what they are: a historical friend who has known me for half my life, who is still delightfully quirky and weird in ways I no longer am. I enjoy their company so much more now, accepting the imperfection connection without the pretenses of perfection.
Fantasies
I have to confess, this section would have repulsed me at 14. Too vulnerable, too blunt. This section changed my opinion on the purpose and meaning of fantasy, though. I used to wonder, who is on the couch confessing sexual attraction to their therapist?! Talk about awkward. But I think that’s kind of missing the point, and, if anything, I kind of envy people who are able to reach into and expose the deepest recesses of their mind in therapy. Rather than viewing such candid people with a cringing revulsion, I respect it. It’s tempting to bury our most shameful fantasies, but those same fantasies carry shame for a reason–they tell us something about ourselves and our needs at a very base level.
Reconciliation of middle age
I think this stage is where I’m at currently. I’ll forever marvel the loss I abruptly experienced in February–the startling moment it suddenly hit me out of nowhere, not intellectually, but emotionally: memento mori. I lost the illusion of immortality that moment. I don’t know how until that moment I did not realize I would die. It sounds absurd to even say; of course I knew. But yet, there I was, finally knowing.
So much of my life was thrown into disarray, and in the months following, my perspective on life forever changed. I used to feel like I had limitless time, so I’d do that terrifying thing later; now I realize time is short, and if it’s important to me, I should take the risk, because I won’t always have the opportunity. Everything is imbued with more meaning when you realize: yes, some opportunities have already passed by; some aspects of life aren’t what I wish they were; yet I am the agent capable of actualizing the limited but many realities before me. It is an organizing principle for one’s life, as you realize you are not yet old, but no longer young.
Viorst notes that people often begin to reckon with their mortality at this age, as they see their parents, once infallible, grow old and die. Upon one’s parents’ death, people suddenly realize: the sheath between them and death has been lowered, and it is you who is next. I can see this happening for my mother as her parents rapidly decline, the unspoken realization dawning that this will be her in two decades. In turn, I will follow her.
Death
As much as I would like to say I have reckoned with death, I have not. I have explored numerous philosophical angles to come better to accepting it, with varying degrees of success.
I appreciated the nuance to Viorst’s approach. While she introduced stages of death acceptance as a framework, she didn’t hew to it, either, accepting many people stay at one stage, or, sometimes, die suddenly and don’t get to go through the stages at all. It was interesting to learn that in times past, the “ideal” death was slow and allowed ceremony and celebration–the opposite of what we consider ideal now, just dropping dead so we don’t have to contemplate our own death.
When I think of a self-aware death allowing for celebration and self-reflection, that does sound …. more satisfying than just being snuffed out like a light: it’s the empowerment of closing of one’s final chapter.
From the loss of knowing we will die, we gain the gift of living.
Oneness:
As she came to the closing chapter, she revisited the concept of a baby desiring oneness with its mother. What are we striving for in the end, I wondered? Is “oneness” the acceptance of oneself as separate from others? No, that didn’t sound right; relationships are too important for happiness. Is “oneness” integration with others and the pursuit of relationships? No, that didn’t sound right either; much of loss (and gain) discussed in the book is necessary individuation. I continued reading, and, funnily enough, she went on to say she does not believe life to be an “either/or”, but often “both.” I think that neatly answers my question on what oneness is.
Simon & Garfunkel
Finally, as a final throwaway note–I think where she may have actually really started to win me over was when she referenced Simon & Garfunkel’s “I Am A Rock,” one of my favorite songs, and then, like lightning hitting twice, referenced another favorite song by the same duo, “Richard Cory.” I’ve thought about those two songs the most of any in regards to mental health. I never expected to see either of those songs referenced in a book, much less done in the same manner by which I’ve always thought about them and related to them. Was kind of a nice unexpected touch.
I have (well, had) many other thoughts written, but I had to butcher everything to fit Goodreads’ character limit…. such is life.
This book was definitely not what I had expected. To start with, the very title Necessary Losses threw me off–“loss”, I think, is most often in reference to death: “I’m so sorry for your loss.” It sounded like a book on death and grieving thereof, and as someone who has not lost anyone important to me, it didn’t seem like a book I would get much out of.
Then there was the psychoanalytic element. I’ve been interested in psychology since probably fifth grade, but I swore off books written before the turn of the millennium, especially psychoanalytically-oriented books, by the time I was 14. As a teen, I found psychoanalytic theory maddening in its obscure abstraction, alienating in its overinterpretation, bizarre in its focus on sex. In some ways, it felt more related to the artistic metaphor of poetry, perhaps, or the improvable relativism of philosophy. Most of all, I disliked its distinct lack of empiricism. Could there be a collective Jungian unconscious? Maybe, maybe not; we have no way of proving it.
This book was written in 1986, handily violating my before the turn of the millennium rule. It also opened up with psychoanalytic theory. Yikes. I read the first few chapters about oneness with one’s mother and the womb and all that grimacing. I said I’d read the book, so I was going to finish it, but what exactly had I signed myself up for? This was going to be a slog. I think my eyes rolled back into my head about 720 degrees when she referenced orgasming representing oneness with one’s mother.
But … I persisted onward, trying to find some value in the book. Surely there must be something here I was missing? I tried to be less judgmental towards the more classically Freudian elements. I challenged myself to look for metaphor instead, to take things less literally.
I don’t know where the shift occurred, exactly, but something finally clicked, and I instead began to enjoy the challenge of looking beyond the more literal psychoanalytic concepts to the broader existential meaning. While I am simply never going to get behind classically Freudian concepts from a literal sense, many of the concepts make total sense if looked at metaphorically: we don’t in childhood literally wish to “merge” with our mother, but we do have a profound, intense desire to be cared for, in a way that almost mimics a fusing: we can so desperately want our mother that we override her needs and superimpose ours on hers to be satisfied, or take upon her wants and needs as our own to achieve her love and acceptance. Nor is it a conscious process–few of our deepest needs are conscious and so plainly described. In a certain respect, the theory is like poetry: the meaning exists beyond the bare words on the page.
Honestly, even older theories that have aged poorly can still provide value, not unlike reading the Bible from an interpretive perspective. The Bible is unrealistic if you read it literally–the creation of the Earth in 7 days flies in the face of archaeological evidence, and there’s no way Adam lived to 930 years old. However, the Bible still imparts meaningful messages.
So, I’ll eat crow and admit 14-year-old me was wrong, and way too overly literal. (Unsurprisingly, 14-year-old me also didn't like poetry, so at least there’s a theme.)
So, that’s one aspect of the book review. Cool new area of psychology to explore that I now appreciate so much more!
As for the rest of the book … where to begin?
As noted earlier, Necessary Losses is a bit of a misnomer if you consider “losses” death. I think that’s the point of the book, though; death is a loss, but there are many such losses in our lifetime. Loss of childhood innocence. Loss of relationships we hold dear. Loss of unrealized dreams. To live is to experience loss, and, as such, losses are necessary. However, lest the book seem depressing, it’s actually not at all. To love is to lose; you can’t have one without the other, and the losses we incur give way to gains of their own. There is an obvious example, for instance, that accepting a relationship is over allows us to move on and find someone who is a better fit for us, and accepting death allows us to appreciate the current ephemeral moment more fully. But there are also more subtle losses and gains: for instance, growing up means giving up the bliss of childhood innocence, where anything was possible. By doing so, however, we gain the autonomy our dreaming childhood selves could never actualize. Perhaps we can’t grow up to be an astronaut, but a child also can’t be an astronaut, or a chef, or whatever in the current moment anyway. The adult self, however, can actualize the more realistic dreams. We all lose childhood innocence, but in return, we receive the empowerment of adult autonomy.
In some ways, I feel like Necessary Losses is a survey of the entire lifespan, exploring the losses and gains we grapple with at every lifestage. Babies struggle with the loss of their mother’s constant presence; they gain the ability to explore the world. Teens struggle with the loss of their childhood self, and forge a new one in its wake. Adults contend with the loss of aging parents, and gain perspective of the world and themselves.
The book is more than just a mere survey, though. A mere categorical description of these steps would be as reductionistic as the five stages of grief or the DSM itself. No, what actually makes the book fascinating is how she explores how we grapple with those losses. While loss is universal, the types of losses people experience are not, and they shape us indelibly and uniquely. The losses we experience, how we grapple with them, and the interplay between our fundamental biological hardwiring, society, the connections we have, and prior gains and losses all influence how we deal with and internalize the events of our lives.
But … I don’t think this book is one that is actually served well by a traditional book review. She makes a lot of great points throughout the book, but summarizing them would actually miss the larger value: its ability to articulate bits and pieces of your experience you kind of intuitively know or recognize, but had never named explicitly, as well as the capacity to inspire thought and reflection. When she went over how siblings form identities in opposition to one another as a way of “claiming turf,” I thought to my sister and I: how had we done so? I’d never thought about it, but when I thought more, I realized, we absolutely had done just that growing up, and my identity juxtaposed against my sister’s colored my childhood, and I would suspect my sister much the same.
There were many such instances, and I want to extract out instances like that and think upon them longer. What do my most shameful fantasies say about me? Who did (and do) I identify with beyond my parents, and what does that mean? What was my family’s stated identity? I think I have answers, but they require thought, and I’m sure I’ll learn some things about myself I didn’t know in the process.
I think all of this is also what makes the book eminently rereadable, in the way that few books are. I very, very, very rarely reread any books or rewatch movies. I always figure: what’s the point? I know what will happen if it’s a story, and what information will be conveyed if it’s fact-based. However, I would–and want to–read the book again, later. The lens through which one reads this book is our own lives, and our lives are constantly being rewritten��not just in the sense that we are living longer with more experiences to process, but also in that we are constantly re-evaluating our past selves and re-integrating and redefining. How I viewed my teens as a teen is different from how I viewed it in college, and now–the facts of what happened, the same, but the context, ever dynamic.
Indeed, I actually started this book in July, got about halfway through, and put it aside for life reasons. In the time in between, the ideas presented in the book had time to percolate. When I finally picked this book back up, I restarted from the beginning, and my experience of the book was different than the first attempt. (I can quantify this by looking at what I highlighted with different highlighters! Another testament to the book’s potency, as I never mark up what I read).
The book, of course, isn’t without its flaws. First and foremost: as much as I tried to get past the older psychoanalytic theory bits, some just … don’t square, no matter how I tried to look at them differently. I cannot get behind the Freudian concept of parents having incestuous feelings towards their children, for instance. If we’re gonna go all psychoanalysis here, I think Freud projected some of his own fantasies and neuroses onto the broader human psyche. I’m also okay dispensing with the penis envy theory altogether, unless it's in the context of how women might (understandably) envy the position of men in societies that subjugate them as less-than.
Secondly, while the book is really light on studies (which I think is actually a good thing), it does cite a study in which people got subliminal messages of “MOMMY AND ME” flashing on the screen and then went on to smoke less, be happier, etc, to profound effects. The high degree of efficacy sounded suspicious… if subliminal messaging was so effective, no one would need therapists or medication (good thing, too, a psyche so easily influenced by subliminal messaging sounds dystopian!). I think these studies were, in retrospect, probably good examples of psychology’s replicability crisis.
Thirdly, the book does show its age a bit. I feel like this is a bit of an unfair criticism as it’s certainly no fault of the book, and aside from a few areas (e.g., the origins of homosexuality, the role of women in the workplace and in marriage), it honestly does not detract from the book’s takeaways in any way. So much about the book captures the timeless nature of the human condition, in fact.
While I won’t attempt to summarize the book for the reasons I note earlier, I will at least highlight (some) of the book that really impressed me or inspired the most thought:
Childhood development
I downplayed the role of family and environment on behavior and personality for a long time. Yeah, being verbally and physically abused would shape you, no one would deny that. Beyond that, though, does it really have that big of an impact? What’s the point of talking about the past? You’re in control of your own behavior; don’t like your life, change it.
I don’t think it’s a waste of time anymore. As Viorst notes, we repeat the traumas and insecurities of our childhood over and over. As they say, those who don’t know history are doomed to repeat it. The influences of our childhood, intentional or otherwise, have an indelible impact on us.
On another note, childhood is indeed a loss. I remember realizing as an 11-year-old that pretend play was no longer much fun, and the unsettling realization I had that I was growing up, and I would soon never find pretend play fun again. I wasn’t sad … more almost a detached, disconnected feeling. But I do mourn childhood, on merit of the infinite possibility and joy. I love spending time with children now, because they bring me back to that moment in a way nothing else can.
Siblings
Viorst describes how siblings impact our development and identities. In dysfunctional families, siblings may band together, or the opposite. She specifically describes a phenomenon called “Hansel & Gretel,” wherein children develop close bonds as a protective mechanism. I’d never thought about it before, but I’ve seen this dynamic before. It’s fascinating to ponder what creates this dynamic vs. the one I’m more familiar with–siblings splitting into scattered atoms, almost repulsed by one another.
I think her point about siblings providing a unique connection point is very apt: no one knows the experience of being raised by your parents like your siblings, for better and for worse.
Friendships
Her description of the different types of friendships is probably the best I’ve seen, from the convenience friend to the activity friend to the crossroads friend and beyond. I can think of people in my life who fit into every single category, and while their relative importance varies, they are all important in having a meaningful sense of social connection.
I loved her section on how one of the losses of friendship is accepting … people won’t be perfect. Our friends will fail us and disappoint us and not provide everything we need, or have flaws we don’t like. Yet, at the same time, accepting what she calls “imperfect connections” for what they are gives us the gain of being accepted for our own flaws in turn, and the benefits those friendships provide us nonetheless.
As a formerly friendless kid who always preferred going deep and intense in friendships over casual acquaintanceship, I pined for the perfect friendship. Unsurprisingly, I found myself disappointed again and again. In recent years, I’ve grown to accept that not everyone will be “it”, but that doesn’t mean my friendship with them doesn’t have value. Accepting the limitations of friendships I wish were deeper has paradoxically allowed me to enjoy those friendships more, for what it is. I have a once-close high school friend that I now have little in common with. For a long time, I mourned our friendship and resented the distance. Now, however, I can accept them for what they are: a historical friend who has known me for half my life, who is still delightfully quirky and weird in ways I no longer am. I enjoy their company so much more now, accepting the imperfection connection without the pretenses of perfection.
Fantasies
I have to confess, this section would have repulsed me at 14. Too vulnerable, too blunt. This section changed my opinion on the purpose and meaning of fantasy, though. I used to wonder, who is on the couch confessing sexual attraction to their therapist?! Talk about awkward. But I think that’s kind of missing the point, and, if anything, I kind of envy people who are able to reach into and expose the deepest recesses of their mind in therapy. Rather than viewing such candid people with a cringing revulsion, I respect it. It’s tempting to bury our most shameful fantasies, but those same fantasies carry shame for a reason–they tell us something about ourselves and our needs at a very base level.
Reconciliation of middle age
I think this stage is where I’m at currently. I’ll forever marvel the loss I abruptly experienced in February–the startling moment it suddenly hit me out of nowhere, not intellectually, but emotionally: memento mori. I lost the illusion of immortality that moment. I don’t know how until that moment I did not realize I would die. It sounds absurd to even say; of course I knew. But yet, there I was, finally knowing.
So much of my life was thrown into disarray, and in the months following, my perspective on life forever changed. I used to feel like I had limitless time, so I’d do that terrifying thing later; now I realize time is short, and if it’s important to me, I should take the risk, because I won’t always have the opportunity. Everything is imbued with more meaning when you realize: yes, some opportunities have already passed by; some aspects of life aren’t what I wish they were; yet I am the agent capable of actualizing the limited but many realities before me. It is an organizing principle for one’s life, as you realize you are not yet old, but no longer young.
Viorst notes that people often begin to reckon with their mortality at this age, as they see their parents, once infallible, grow old and die. Upon one’s parents’ death, people suddenly realize: the sheath between them and death has been lowered, and it is you who is next. I can see this happening for my mother as her parents rapidly decline, the unspoken realization dawning that this will be her in two decades. In turn, I will follow her.
Death
As much as I would like to say I have reckoned with death, I have not. I have explored numerous philosophical angles to come better to accepting it, with varying degrees of success.
I appreciated the nuance to Viorst’s approach. While she introduced stages of death acceptance as a framework, she didn’t hew to it, either, accepting many people stay at one stage, or, sometimes, die suddenly and don’t get to go through the stages at all. It was interesting to learn that in times past, the “ideal” death was slow and allowed ceremony and celebration–the opposite of what we consider ideal now, just dropping dead so we don’t have to contemplate our own death.
When I think of a self-aware death allowing for celebration and self-reflection, that does sound …. more satisfying than just being snuffed out like a light: it’s the empowerment of closing of one’s final chapter.
From the loss of knowing we will die, we gain the gift of living.
Oneness:
As she came to the closing chapter, she revisited the concept of a baby desiring oneness with its mother. What are we striving for in the end, I wondered? Is “oneness” the acceptance of oneself as separate from others? No, that didn’t sound right; relationships are too important for happiness. Is “oneness” integration with others and the pursuit of relationships? No, that didn’t sound right either; much of loss (and gain) discussed in the book is necessary individuation. I continued reading, and, funnily enough, she went on to say she does not believe life to be an “either/or”, but often “both.” I think that neatly answers my question on what oneness is.
Simon & Garfunkel
Finally, as a final throwaway note–I think where she may have actually really started to win me over was when she referenced Simon & Garfunkel’s “I Am A Rock,” one of my favorite songs, and then, like lightning hitting twice, referenced another favorite song by the same duo, “Richard Cory.” I’ve thought about those two songs the most of any in regards to mental health. I never expected to see either of those songs referenced in a book, much less done in the same manner by which I’ve always thought about them and related to them. Was kind of a nice unexpected touch.
I have (well, had) many other thoughts written, but I had to butcher everything to fit Goodreads’ character limit…. such is life.
August 3, 2024
Loved it! Excellent book!
May 13, 2024
Depressing af
May 17, 2013
A lady at my book club kept referring to this book and so I finally read it. Kind of depressing and at times I didn't like it at all. I understand her point that we need to give some things up so we can grow, but still awful to think about. It was also a tad dry. How could the author who wrote, "Alexander and the No Good Very Bad Day" have written this book too?!?
Quotes I liked:
p. 163 "A normal adolescent describes two major goals in life 1. putting an end to the threat of nuclear holocaust and 2. owning five knit shirts with a Ralph Lauren label."
p. 204 "The married state...the completest image of heaven and hell we are capable of receiving in this life."
p.256 "Indeed, it has often been said, that in becoming parents ourselves, we now understand what our mother and father went through and thus can no longer blame and denounce them, as once we could easily do, for all that we suffered at their hands."
p. 261 "....in those years from ages thirty-five to forty-five or fifty, we learn that many hopes remain unredeemed. There is plenty we wanted, and did not receive from our parents. It is time to know, and accept, that we never will."
Quotes I liked:
p. 163 "A normal adolescent describes two major goals in life 1. putting an end to the threat of nuclear holocaust and 2. owning five knit shirts with a Ralph Lauren label."
p. 204 "The married state...the completest image of heaven and hell we are capable of receiving in this life."
p.256 "Indeed, it has often been said, that in becoming parents ourselves, we now understand what our mother and father went through and thus can no longer blame and denounce them, as once we could easily do, for all that we suffered at their hands."
p. 261 "....in those years from ages thirty-five to forty-five or fifty, we learn that many hopes remain unredeemed. There is plenty we wanted, and did not receive from our parents. It is time to know, and accept, that we never will."
August 21, 2019
With the help of this book I can finally conclude that I am not a big fan of Freudian theories.
I really had high hopes that I would like this book, since I do believe, that the idea of having to let go of what we hold deep to us is truly a necessary loss, and a healthy one too. But having to connect every little incident of our life with some freudian theory seems to be a little bit troublesome. For not every anxiety dates back to our separation anxiety and not every feeling a human being goes through can be explained with a model or a template. I think we are more complicated than to simply describe our coming to adolescence with the Oedipus Complex.
The last chapters of the book were too repetitive and lacking in content. Throughout the whole book I felt like the author was trying to prove a point by throwing in as many names and theory as she can rather than discuss them.
To be fair I enjoyed some of the examples and found them relatable, but over all I think the book could have been better edited.
I really had high hopes that I would like this book, since I do believe, that the idea of having to let go of what we hold deep to us is truly a necessary loss, and a healthy one too. But having to connect every little incident of our life with some freudian theory seems to be a little bit troublesome. For not every anxiety dates back to our separation anxiety and not every feeling a human being goes through can be explained with a model or a template. I think we are more complicated than to simply describe our coming to adolescence with the Oedipus Complex.
The last chapters of the book were too repetitive and lacking in content. Throughout the whole book I felt like the author was trying to prove a point by throwing in as many names and theory as she can rather than discuss them.
To be fair I enjoyed some of the examples and found them relatable, but over all I think the book could have been better edited.
August 22, 2023
Bardzo fajny pomysł na przedstawienie wiedzy z zakresu psychologii rozwoju człowieka w formie popularnonaukowej. Niestety wyraźnie widać, ze książka została napisana ponad 30 lat temu. Cześć teorii podawanych przez autorkę została odrzucona lub zmieniona (np. fragment o skuteczności komunikatów podprogowych) i nie ma potwierdzenia w badaniach naukowych. Autorka posługuje się przede wszystkim teorią z nurtu psychoanalitycznego, a to rzutuje mocno na podejście do seksualności i do relacji rodzic - dziecko. Razi trochę stronniczość z jaka autorka posługuje się wybranymi teoriami, jednocześnie omijając inne, które mniej pasują jej do przedstawianej tezy (np. W kwestii funkcji ojców i matek w życiu dzieci).
February 22, 2021
Book about attachment theory, written by someone with no qualifications whatsoever.
It was published in 1986, and reading it was like stepping back in time. She tries to use attachment theory to explain everything- orgasms, affairs, death, fear of death, homosexuality. Quite offensive, really.
The only enjoyable parts were good quotes from Mark Twain, Soren Kierkegaard, and CS Lewis. And Viorst quotes others extensively, Simone de Bouvier in every chapter, it seemed.
This has not aged well, to speak bluntly.
Will not be reading her book about marriage. Cringey.
It was published in 1986, and reading it was like stepping back in time. She tries to use attachment theory to explain everything- orgasms, affairs, death, fear of death, homosexuality. Quite offensive, really.
The only enjoyable parts were good quotes from Mark Twain, Soren Kierkegaard, and CS Lewis. And Viorst quotes others extensively, Simone de Bouvier in every chapter, it seemed.
This has not aged well, to speak bluntly.
Will not be reading her book about marriage. Cringey.
Read
January 20, 2023W ciągu całego naszego życia, wielokrotnie jesteśmy skazani na utratę. Nie chodzi tylko o śmierć bliskich nam osób, dojrzewając tracimy również wiele naszych dziecinnych złudzeń, a dorastać to znaczy odkryć własne ja, nawet za cenę utraty bezpieczeństwa, jakie zapewniali nam nasi rodzice. Jak trudne by to nie było.
Książka Judith Viorst była dla mnie ciężka w odbiorze. Autorka zafascynowana była Freudem, non stop przewijał się motyw kompleksu Edypa i naszych skomplikowanych emocjonalnie relacji z rodzicami. Szczerze mówiąc nie jestem na bieżąco z teoriami psychologicznymi, więc nie jestem w stanie w żadnym stopniu zweryfikować tych informacji.
Jeżeli chodzi o moje oczekiwania, to książka zupełnie ich nie spełniła. Rozdział poświęcony żałobie był bardzo krótki i nie dowiedziałam się z niego niczego nowego. Próbowałam z pozostałych rozdziałów wyciągnąć coś dla siebie, ale nie do końca mi się to udawało, w tym momencie nie potrzebowałam tego typu porad. I pewnie nigdy z nich nie skorzystam, bo raczej do tej książki nie wrócę.
Książka Judith Viorst była dla mnie ciężka w odbiorze. Autorka zafascynowana była Freudem, non stop przewijał się motyw kompleksu Edypa i naszych skomplikowanych emocjonalnie relacji z rodzicami. Szczerze mówiąc nie jestem na bieżąco z teoriami psychologicznymi, więc nie jestem w stanie w żadnym stopniu zweryfikować tych informacji.
Jeżeli chodzi o moje oczekiwania, to książka zupełnie ich nie spełniła. Rozdział poświęcony żałobie był bardzo krótki i nie dowiedziałam się z niego niczego nowego. Próbowałam z pozostałych rozdziałów wyciągnąć coś dla siebie, ale nie do końca mi się to udawało, w tym momencie nie potrzebowałam tego typu porad. I pewnie nigdy z nich nie skorzystam, bo raczej do tej książki nie wrócę.
October 17, 2023
3.5 ⭐
Teniendo en cuenta el contexto en el que fue escrito me he llevado una agradable sorpresa. Muy interesante.
Teniendo en cuenta el contexto en el que fue escrito me he llevado una agradable sorpresa. Muy interesante.
June 15, 2017
"I should be dealing with my demons but I'm dodging them instead" John Mooreland.
And to paraphrase Mark Twain, "There are two types of people: Those that know they have fears to face and those that are liars." But that also means we all have treasures to claim...
Not facing our fears causes trouble.
"Frequently we bring about what we fear." says Judith Viorst in Necessary Losses. She says "I do unhesitatingly embrace Freud’s conviction that our past, with all of its clamorous wishes and terrors and passions, inhabits our present, and his belief in the enormous power of our unconscious—of that region outside our awareness—to shape the events of our life. I also embrace his belief that consciousness helps, that recognizing what we’re doing helps, and that our self-understanding can expand the realm of our choices and possibilities."
One of the most impactful books I've ever read. This book has found it's way into much of my music. Probably most clearly in "The Pain".
"I hold on to the pain. Just won't let it go
Even thou it's no good for my soul
I hold on to the pain. Just won't let it be.
Seems it's become. Too big a part of me."
The Pain
Necessary Losses helps us to face our fears and claim our treasures.
And to paraphrase Mark Twain, "There are two types of people: Those that know they have fears to face and those that are liars." But that also means we all have treasures to claim...
Not facing our fears causes trouble.
"Frequently we bring about what we fear." says Judith Viorst in Necessary Losses. She says "I do unhesitatingly embrace Freud’s conviction that our past, with all of its clamorous wishes and terrors and passions, inhabits our present, and his belief in the enormous power of our unconscious—of that region outside our awareness—to shape the events of our life. I also embrace his belief that consciousness helps, that recognizing what we’re doing helps, and that our self-understanding can expand the realm of our choices and possibilities."
One of the most impactful books I've ever read. This book has found it's way into much of my music. Probably most clearly in "The Pain".
"I hold on to the pain. Just won't let it go
Even thou it's no good for my soul
I hold on to the pain. Just won't let it be.
Seems it's become. Too big a part of me."
The Pain
Necessary Losses helps us to face our fears and claim our treasures.
May 29, 2011
Really great stuff in this book by Judith Viorst. (Yes, she is also the children's author who wrote "Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day," think that is the title.) If you are suffering a loss, going through a life transition or just trying to understand life, love and relationships give this book a look. You don't have to read it cover to cover. But do read the chapters on friendship and marriage. Some might take issue with her heavy references to Freudian theory--but even Freud eventually did. As Viorst so succintly says, "Losing is the price we pay for living. It is also the source of much of our growth and gain...We have to deal with our necessary losses. We should understand how these losses are linked to our gains." To my this is a very human way to embrace all that we go through in our lives.
June 9, 2010
This was a book I had to read a chapter at a time and then reflect on it. I survived quite a bit of loss from the time I was a very small child, and this book helped me to understand the impact of that loss. One or two chapters opened up very deep emotions. I spent one weekend in bed sobbing after reading one. nevertheless, I highly recommend this book to anyone dealing with loss or abandonment issues. It was wonderfully insightful and helped me deal with issues too long buried.
September 13, 2020
Przeczytałam trzydzieści parę stron, więcej nie pociągnę — co za psychoanalityczne gówno.
Książka zestarzała się bardzo, nie rozumiem, dlaczego parę miesięcy temu wydano polskie wznowienie po ponad 20 latach (chyba że jakimś cudem to zaktualizowali?). Bełkot.
Książka zestarzała się bardzo, nie rozumiem, dlaczego parę miesięcy temu wydano polskie wznowienie po ponad 20 latach (chyba że jakimś cudem to zaktualizowali?). Bełkot.
July 20, 2021
This book has several poignant observations about what I can only describe as “the human condition.” The author breaks down human life, from birth to death, in chronological order and explains the losses we experience at each stage. I would have liked this book more but it was a little outdated and stuck me as very heteronormative. The books insistence that we are trapped by gender roles - although partially true - didn’t reflect my current reality. The hardest for me to read were the beginning chapters on birth and childhood, because it very much made it sound like if you had anything outside a “normal” family or were born anything other than straight and cis, that you had somehow deviated from your clinical timeline prescribed in this book. It was very Freudian and Oedipal in nature; the author repeats many times that almost all experiences in our life connect back to us trying to achieve “mommy and me” symbiosis.
Despite some of those leanings, I found this to be a very insightful read on human life as a whole. Some parts struck me as very true for myself, or I could see the patterns in my family lineage. This would make for an excellent reference book: finding the section where you or your child are in at this time, and reading that section. I will say that with nearly 90 pages of elaboration and notes, you can tell that serious research and work went into this book. Although quite reliant on Freud, there are also countless allusions to historical and literary references, including poems and quotes on the subject. As someone who enjoys the study of literature, that stood out to me as a layered analysis of “the human condition.” Would have gotten more stars if it perhaps wasn’t limited by the constraints of its publication time. Maybe it’s time for an updated or expanded version.
Despite some of those leanings, I found this to be a very insightful read on human life as a whole. Some parts struck me as very true for myself, or I could see the patterns in my family lineage. This would make for an excellent reference book: finding the section where you or your child are in at this time, and reading that section. I will say that with nearly 90 pages of elaboration and notes, you can tell that serious research and work went into this book. Although quite reliant on Freud, there are also countless allusions to historical and literary references, including poems and quotes on the subject. As someone who enjoys the study of literature, that stood out to me as a layered analysis of “the human condition.” Would have gotten more stars if it perhaps wasn’t limited by the constraints of its publication time. Maybe it’s time for an updated or expanded version.
February 29, 2024
"Losing is the price we pay for living"
I hardly have words to synthesize the sweeping nature of this book. Viorst aims to trace our development through the "necessary losses" we face throughout life. These begin with the psychosexual relationships we share with our parents (including but not limited to: the ways in which we simultaneously must compete and de-identify with one parent in order to become more like the other [as a result of our universally latent bisexuality]) and siblings, while also dissecting the psychosexual versions of relationships we share with our friends and lovers, before so masterfully unmasking innumerable landscapes of lost entities, ideologies, and stages of life we will traverse along our journeys until we reach our final, physical deaths.
It is an ambitious and wildly effective attempt, one that draws together centuries of psychology, sociology, biology, poetry, literature, and personal/semi-personal anecdotes to lend in craft. It is nothing short of mind blowing what Viorst is able to accomplish within 327 pages, and for me, makes its way into that category of books I would not hesitate to recommend to anyone from any walk of life of any appropriate age from anywhere in the world. It is ESSENTIAL, LIFE AFFIRMING reading, as it offers a unique opportunity to discover the purpose and poignancy of loss, and how it shapes us into the people we are destined to become; because without it, as with death, life would be "a picture without a frame."
***AND OF COURSE!!! I GOT THIS RECOMMENDATION FROM THE BEAUTIFUL, MULTIHYPHENATE, KEKE PALMER. WHICH (AFTER BEING SO BLOWN AWAY BY THE CONTENTS OF THIS BOOK) SOMEHOW FAILS TO SURPRISE ME...
I hardly have words to synthesize the sweeping nature of this book. Viorst aims to trace our development through the "necessary losses" we face throughout life. These begin with the psychosexual relationships we share with our parents (including but not limited to: the ways in which we simultaneously must compete and de-identify with one parent in order to become more like the other [as a result of our universally latent bisexuality]) and siblings, while also dissecting the psychosexual versions of relationships we share with our friends and lovers, before so masterfully unmasking innumerable landscapes of lost entities, ideologies, and stages of life we will traverse along our journeys until we reach our final, physical deaths.
It is an ambitious and wildly effective attempt, one that draws together centuries of psychology, sociology, biology, poetry, literature, and personal/semi-personal anecdotes to lend in craft. It is nothing short of mind blowing what Viorst is able to accomplish within 327 pages, and for me, makes its way into that category of books I would not hesitate to recommend to anyone from any walk of life of any appropriate age from anywhere in the world. It is ESSENTIAL, LIFE AFFIRMING reading, as it offers a unique opportunity to discover the purpose and poignancy of loss, and how it shapes us into the people we are destined to become; because without it, as with death, life would be "a picture without a frame."
***AND OF COURSE!!! I GOT THIS RECOMMENDATION FROM THE BEAUTIFUL, MULTIHYPHENATE, KEKE PALMER. WHICH (AFTER BEING SO BLOWN AWAY BY THE CONTENTS OF THIS BOOK) SOMEHOW FAILS TO SURPRISE ME...
September 24, 2017
Nothing about us is perfect. Humans have good and bad in them and life is easier when we accept that. This book talks about humans and their lives, offering great perspective to how we engage with people around us and ourselves.
Psychoanalysis has a lot of answers to offer and like everything the answers are imperfect.
Pick this book up when you have questions about people and relationships and self. A book that will stay on my bookshelf forever.
Psychoanalysis has a lot of answers to offer and like everything the answers are imperfect.
Pick this book up when you have questions about people and relationships and self. A book that will stay on my bookshelf forever.
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