Introduction: Grief is considered to be negative manifestations of affect, cognition, and behavior. However, persons who experience grief have also reported enduring positive outcomes in such domains as interpersonal relationships, personal strengths, and life perspectives. This review evaluated current measures of grief to determine if such positive outcomes can be adequately assessed. Methods: The Texas Revised Inventory of Grief, Grief Experience Inventory, Bereavement Phenomenology Questionnaire, Core Bereavement Items, Continuing Bonds Scale, and Hogan Grief Reaction Checklist (currently the most common measures of grief) are reviewed. Results: Only one of the reviewed measures assessed posttraumatic growth as a component of grief (i.e., Hogan Grief Reaction Checklist). Conclusion: Since posttraumatic growth and negative psychological adjustment after traumatic events can coexist, it is important that measures of grief used in both clinical and research domains allow an assessment of positive response.

Awareness of one's own values, beliefs, and attitudes is one of the most important components of multicultural competence for psychotherapists (Sue & Sue, 2003). Several authors of the chapters in this volume stress the need for psychotherapists to understand how their own values interact and influence their abilities to provide psychotherapeutic services to clients. Two types of value conflicts can occur in the course of psychotherapy that can be difficult to resolve. First, conflicts can occur when clients encounter a clash between their spiritual beliefs and their personal issues and decisions. Often clients seek services from psychotherapists to help resolve these issues, but because psychotherapy is not a value neutral process, it is quite possible that psychotherapists themselves will encounter a second type of conflict when their own beliefs and values are different than those of their clients. In particular, value conflicts often occur when a psychotherapist's spiritual or religious beliefs clash with a client's presenting issue or course of action. Because most mental health training programs do not train students in how to deal with these conflicts, it can be difficult for psychotherapists to know how to resolve these issues, especially when there are strong feelings and beliefs involved.The purpose of the present chapter is to describe the types of value conflicts that may occur for clients and psychotherapists and to discuss ways in You have to start knowing yourself so well that you begin to know other people. A piece of us is in every person we can ever meet.-John D. McDonald (1974)

The influence of victim/offender racial similarity on victim forgiveness was investigated in a study of interpersonal transgressions. It was hypothesized that racial similarity between victim and offender would influence forgiveness only for transgressions that were less distressing for the victim. Participants were 104 adults (45 Black and 59 White) who provided a narrative description of a significant interpersonal transgression they had experienced and completed measures of transgression-related distress and forgiveness. Forgiveness was measured as positive (benevolence) and negative (revenge, avoidance) motivations toward the offender. For negative motivetions, revenge and avoidance, there was no effect of racial similarity: more severe distress was associated with less forgiveness for all victim/offender pairings. However, the results revealed a significant interaction of victim/offender racial similarity and distress for positive motivations: Black victims reported increased benevolence towards Black offenders after more distressing transgressions. Victims in other racial combinations reported reduced benevolence for more distressing transgressions. In group favoring of Black offenders by Black victims may be an unexplored aspect of forgiveness. Little research has addressed the potential influence of context on interpersonal forgiveness, and this study suggests that these influences may play an important role.

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