cover image Rituals for Our Times: Celebrating, Healing, and Changing Our Lives and Our Relationships

Rituals for Our Times: Celebrating, Healing, and Changing Our Lives and Our Relationships

Evan Imber-Black. Harper Perennial, $22.5 (331pp) ISBN 978-0-06-016714-1

The coauthors of Rituals in Families and Family Therapy , both of whom head family therapy programs--Imber-Black at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York City, Roberts at the University of Massachusetts--contend that rituals are essential to social growth, as they help individuals to develop personal identities and provide families with frameworks through which to maintain and strengthen their relationships. While leaving room for adapting or creating new rituals in accord with differing family compositions, customs and cultural heritages, the authors of this notably jargon-free psychological study offer practical advice on how to best use words and symbols to create special events through which to celebrate life's continuity, rhythmic cycles and changes from birth to death. They also explain how such everyday rituals as meals and bedtimes ``shape, capture, and express relationships.'' Illustrations not seen by PW. (Oct.)