A Crisis of Meaning: How Gay Men Are Making Sense of AIDS Book PDF, ePub eBook

Join our eBook service for unlimited books & audiobooks. Get a free 7 day subscription! ↓↓↓↓↓


Book Descriptions:
For gay men, the demands of the AIDS epidemic are enormous and unrelenting. Regardless of HIV status, all are called on to maintain vigilant safety with sex, to face down a cultural stigma greater even than homophobia, and to somehow find a way to go forward in a world heavy with loss. As exhaustion and grief threaten to overwhelm the activism and optimism of earlier years, and with new infections on the rise among young gay men, the challenge of finding meaning in a world turned upside down is more than an idle philosophical exercise. It is a matter of psychological and perhaps even physical survival.
In this poignant and uncompromising new book, Dr. Steven Schwartzberg offers a ground-breaking perspective on how gay men (and particularly HIV-positive gay men) find ways to rebuild a world of meaning amid the trauma and uncertainty of the AIDS crisis. Eschewing both glib prescriptions for turning tragedy into triumph, and theoretical abstractions, Schwartzberg grounds his insights in his own experiences as a gay man and as a practicing psychotherapist, and in in-depth interviews with nineteen men living with HIV. Ranging in age from twenty-seven to fifty, the men include a construction foreman, a physician, an art historian, a waiter, a librarian, and a licensed massage therapist. With candor, insight, eagerness, and a remarkable ability to share of themselves, they speak eloquently about how HIV has affected their views of the world, their senses of themselves, and how they live their lives. Interweaving the men's stories with observations from his research and clinical practice, Schwartzberg bears witness to the remarkable transformations some men have accomplished, and the anguish of meaninglessness that weighs others down. He strives to uncover why some view HIV as a catalyst for change or growth, while others see it only as punishment. And though he passes no judgment on the coping strategies he describes, Schwartzberg does insist on the vital necessity of balancing somber reality with healing, life-sustaining hope. He argues that men who opt for too much illusion and too little reality risk shoddy self-care and inadequate preparation for the future, while those who find no escape from reality may teeter into rage or suicidal despair.
Beautifully written, with piercing awareness of the enormity of the challenges confronting individuals with HIV, this book celebrates the resilience of the human spirit. It is both a keen psychological guide and an elegiac chronicle of what life for many has become. Gently pointing the way to an oasis of growth, strength, and love that exists amid the epidemic's bleak terrain of loss, it is essential reading for people living with HIV, for their friends, families, and the mental health professionals who care for them, and for all gay men grappling with the enormous changes AIDS has brought to a community under siege.

A Crisis of Meaning: How Gay Men Are Making Sense of AIDS by Steven Schwartzberg

From reader reviews:

Crystal McMullen:

Why don't make it to become your habit? Right now, try to ready your time to do the important act, like looking for your favorite book and reading a guide. Beside you can solve your short lived problem; you can add your knowledge by the book entitled A Crisis of Meaning: How Gay Men Are Making Sense of AIDS. Try to face the book A Crisis of Meaning: How Gay Men Are Making Sense of AIDS as your good friend. It means that it can to be your friend when you truly feel alone and beside those of course make you smarter than ever before. Yeah, it is very fortuned for you personally. The book makes you more confidence because you can know almost everything by the book. So , let us make new experience in addition to knowledge with this book.

Wilda Alexander:

Spent a free the perfect time to be fun activity to do! A lot of people spent their leisure time with their family, or their own friends. Usually they undertaking activity like watching television, likely to beach, or picnic inside the park. They actually doing same task every week. Do you feel it? Do you need to something different to fill your free time/ holiday? Might be reading a book may be option to fill your cost-free time/ holiday. The first thing you ask may be what kinds of e-book that you should read. If you want to test look for book, may be the reserve untitled A Crisis of Meaning: How Gay Men Are Making Sense of AIDS can be very good book to read. May be it can be best activity to you.

Raymond Dahms:

Your reading sixth sense will not betray anyone, why because this A Crisis of Meaning: How Gay Men Are Making Sense of AIDS book written by well-known writer who knows well how to make book that may be understand by anyone who have read the book. Written with good manner for you, still dripping wet every ideas and creating skill only for eliminate your current hunger then you still doubt A Crisis of Meaning: How Gay Men Are Making Sense of AIDS as good book not simply by the cover but also from the content. This is one e-book that can break don't ascertain book by its deal with, so do you still needing a different sixth sense to pick this!? Oh come on your looking at sixth sense already alerted you so why you have to listening to a different sixth sense.

Donald Warren:

You will get this A Crisis of Meaning: How Gay Men Are Making Sense of AIDS by look at the bookstore or Mall. Only viewing or reviewing it could possibly to be your solve problem if you get difficulties for ones knowledge. Kinds of this book are various. Not only by simply written or printed but also can you enjoy this book through e-book. In the modern era like now, you just looking of your mobile phone and searching what their problem. Right now, choose your personal ways to get more information about your publication. It is most important to arrange you to ultimately make your knowledge are still revise. Let's try to choose appropriate ways for you.