In the Shadow of the Epidemic: Being Hiv-Negative in the Age of AIDS

by Walt Odets

Book Overview

For gay men who are HIV-negative in a community devastated by AIDS, survival may be a matter of grief, guilt, anxiety, and isolation. In the Shadow of the Epidemic is a passionate and intimate look at the emotional and psychological impact of AIDS on the lives of the survivors of the epidemic, those who must face on a regular basis the death of friends and, in some cases, the decimation of their communities. Drawing upon his own experience...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0822316382
• ISBN13: 9780822316381
• Release Date: July 1995
• Publisher: Duke University Press
• Length: 328 Pages
• Weight: 1.30 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 6.1" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

A comprehensive and necessary volume

In the Shadow of the Epidemic is an essential textbook for all mental health professionals. Set in a brilliant clinical framework, it retains in a stirring way a sense of the person within each case study; there is a wealth of knowledge balanced with a profound feeling within. I found that each chapter evoked a sense of pain, grief and loss. This awareness is critical in understanding the clinical issues that must be examined when treating this community. Every mental health professional must confront these issues. This book is the essential tool to accomplish this. I am eagerly waiting for the next volume from Dr. Odets.

Courage and compassion

Walt Odets has had the courage and the insight to examine the AIDS epidemic as a crisis in mental health. Clinically sound, this is also a work filled with pathos and humanity. This book is a moving, thought-provoking, and ground-breaking exploration of the effects of a nightmare from which we have yet to awake.

The necessary balm

No other book -- and no other therapist -- have offered such a cogent and searching examination of the psychological factors attending on HIV seroconversion. This volume has set the tone for the debate on "barebacking" and other '90s phenonomena. But it is much more: a recipe for living, with no definitive conclusions, although with plenty of food for thought for the thoughtful reader. This is necessary reading for anyone who has quarrelled with their own HIV fantasies, or with guilt, or dread. It is a book for every gay man who lives the way we live now.