Coping with HIV Infection

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xviii

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2. Living on the Boundaries

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 1-1

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   2. Living on the Boundaries

      • Lena Nilsson Schönnesson, Michael W. Ross

      Pages 1-6

3. The HIV Scenario

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 7-7

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   2. The Impact of Chronic and Terminal Illness

      • Lena Nilsson Schönnesson, Michael W. Ross

      Pages 9-19

   3. HIV Testing and Its Impact

      • Lena Nilsson Schönnesson, Michael W. Ross

      Pages 21-33

   4. HIV-Related Threats

      • Lena Nilsson Schönnesson, Michael W. Ross

      Pages 35-60

   5. The Insidious Persecutory Drama of HIV

      • Lena Nilsson Schönnesson, Michael W. Ross

      Pages 61-77

   6. The Impact of HIV Infection on Psychological Functioning and Quality of Life

      • Lena Nilsson Schönnesson, Michael W. Ross

      Pages 79-101

4. Psychological Landscapes

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 103-103

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   2. The Existential Context

      • Lena Nilsson Schönnesson, Michael W. Ross

      Pages 105-122

   3. HIV Adaptation Processes

      • Lena Nilsson Schönnesson, Michael W. Ross

      Pages 123-130

   4. The Shattered Self

      • Lena Nilsson Schönnesson, Michael W. Ross

      Pages 131-159

   5. Autonomy, Boundaries, Control, and Death

      • Lena Nilsson Schönnesson, Michael W. Ross

      Pages 161-172

   6. Appendix

      • Lena Nilsson Schönnesson, Michael W. Ross

      Pages 173-176

5. Back Matter

   Pages 173-188

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"I'm like a whirling leaf in the wind," said one of Dr. Lena Nilsson SchOnnesson' s patients, and another "I'm in the claws of HIV." Their voices and those of other HIV-positive patients frame the humanistic and scholarly discussion in this impor­ tant book. Dr. SchOnnesson, a Fulbright scholar at the HIV Center for Clinical and Behavioral Studies, Columbia University in 1995, has unusually extensive clinical experience in counseling HIV-positive gay men. Her work with 38 such patients treated between 1986 and 1995 is discussed in the pages that follow. Dr. SchOnnesson's longitudinal approach to clinical data is extremely unusual in the psychotherapy literature generally, and in the literature on counseling HIV­ positive men in particular. Building upon the experience of such recent scholar­ clinicians as Klitzman, Isay, Schaffner, and others, Dr. SchOnnesson adds some­ thing unique by analyzing her ongoing detailed notes of the psychotherapeutic process in a systematic quantitative as well as qualitative manner. The analysis of her data is further informed by her coauthor, Dr. Michael Ross, a therapist and investigator whose contribution to the clinical and research literature on the psychotherapeutic treatment of gay men has already been substantial.

• HIV
• HIV infection
• autonomy
• coping
• health
• health care
• quality of life

• Department of Social Work, University of Gothenburg, Gothenburg, Sweden

  Lena Nilsson Schönnesson

• WHO Center for Health Promotion Research and Development School of Public Health, University of Texas, Houston Health Science Center, Houston, USA

  Michael W. Ross

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