Analysts' Expressed Attitudes Toward Dealing with Death and Illness1

IN THIS BRIEF PRESENTATION I WILL report on an informal attempt to find out how older analysts or those who had faced life-threatening illnesses had dealt with these issues. As the other panelists have reported, there is relatively little in the literature about how analysts have handled problems of serious illness, aging, and imminent death. Perhaps we have all grown up psychoanalytically

with the image of Freud, heroic and stoic, enduring illness and many surgeries without interrupting his work.

Poets talk of death more easily. I turned to the Shakespeare Concordance and found eight double-column pages of references to death in plays and sonnets. In Measure for Measure there is the admonition to "prepare his mind for death for his soul's sake"—perhaps our paraphrase should be "and for his patient's sake."

A more comprehensive study was done on the attitudes of the aging analyst by Margo Tallmer. Her findings confirm findings of previous investigators that there is an "entrenchment of denial and isolation as well as narcissistic withdrawal." In her sample of 125 older psychoanalysts she found that a majority used defensive measures such as intellectualization, projection, and denial to avoid any discussion of the possibility of their own death with patients.