‘I was impressed with the accessibility of the book, offering a guided tour through the history, context and purposes of reminiscence therapy, the range of applications from promoting social and emotional stimulation to reminiscence as psychotherapy. It also provides a brief overview of its theoretical underpinnings… As a book for health professionals interested in reminiscence work, it is a must for the shelf… most importantly it emphasizes the need for adequate training and supervision for those undertaking this type of work… the authors [also] provide a very good working guide to the assessment process’ - Aging and Health

In this practical and accessible book, leading exponents of reminiscence work describe the purposes and techniques of reminiscence and set out detailed guidelines on how to implement and conduct a wide range of reminiscence activities with different types of client.

Highlighting its tremendous diversity and potential - and its special ability to allow people of all ages and abilities to communicate deeply about their lives - the authors separate out the different aims of reminiscence, which include intellectual or social stimulation, allowing people to leave behind them a cultural legacy, or a means of intergenerational communication. They show clearly how each can be directly beneficial either to clients or their carers, or for improving the culture of the arena in which the activity is being carried out.

An Introduction to the Purposes

An introduction to the purposes

We believe it is very important to embed reminiscence work into the context of actual needs - the needs of the client, of the carer/staff or of the unit itself. We call this the 3C approach (client/carer/culture) and we discuss it at much greater length in Chapter 2. We want to get across that the assessment of needs always has to come first, because it is only after you have assessed need that you can know whether reminiscence work would be useful in meeting those needs; so we shall discuss these ‘setting conditions’ in detail.

Having considered what the client needs, we can examine, in the context of this book, what reminiscence might offer to help fulfil any ...

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