Revelations and insights can occur at any age. Just ask self-admitted “late bloomer” Lee Raffel of Port Washington.
Raffel, 86, is a social worker and marriage/family therapist who began her practice when she was 50. In 1997, when she was 74, she was working with a client, an attorney and litigator, who at one session suddenly bellowed, “I hate conflict!”
“It was like a wake-up call,” she told The Chronicle in a telephone interview. “I thought, ‘He’s talking about me.’”
“I have been a conflict avoider, a peacemaker,” she continued. “I thought, ‘I can’t tell [my client] this. This is his story.’ But it was really my story.”
For several years, even as she was writing her first book (“Should I Stay or Go? How Controlled Separation Can Save Your Marriage,” published in 1999), Raffel kept thinking about what that client said.
Finally, in 2002, she decided she had to write a second book. The result is “I Hate Conflict! Seven Steps to Resolving Differences with Anyone in Your Life” (McGraw-Hill, trade paperback, $16.95).
This book “wasn’t easy to write,” not least because she based it on her personal experiences as well as her work with clients and on research. “I personally have to follow what I preach,” she said. “That’s not always so easy.”
In the book (a partial text of which can be seen online at books.google.com), she identifies five different styles people use to deal with conflict:
• Conflict Avoiders, who “would rather not argue with anyone about anything.”
• Conflict Fixers, who “see conflict as an opportunity to get involved.”
• Conflict Goof-Ups, who “never get it quite right.”
• Conflict Antagonists, who “like to argue and win.”
• Conflict Innovators, who “are prepared to address conflict in a responsible way.
Raffel also proposes seven steps for managing conflicts in constructive ways. They include polite speaking, being willing to admit one’s own mistakes, seeking to understand and showing compassion.
In the telephone interview, Raffel, a longtime member of Congregation Shalom, said that the Jewish ideal of the mensch involves behavior that embodies many of these conflict-managing steps, and that she wrote to that effect in the book.
She also said she mentioned Shalom spiritual leader Rabbi Ronald Shapiro and “a friend of mine,” the late Rabbi Manfred Swarsensky of Temple Beth El in Madison, in the book.
The bookselling site Amazon.com includes six glowing reviews from readers. It also lists a comment from Midwest Book Review, based in Oregon, Wis., which calls the book “an ideal guide to anyone who wants a more peaceful resolution to their conflicts.”
Raffel said she gives workshops — most recently this past January for the Wisconsin chapter of the National Association of Social Workers — and still sees clients, mostly couples, sometimes individuals; and she talks with clients all over the country “as far away as Alaska.”
“It is very exciting work and I’m still loving it,” she said. “I can help people. That gives me a good feeling.”
For more information about the book, visit the publisher’s Web site, www.mcgraw-hill.com.
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