Impact of a Therapist's Life Threatening Illness on the Therapeutic Situation8

THERE IS A REMARKABLE PAUCITY in the literature of the impact of a therapist's serious illness on the therapeutic situation.1 This is not surprising if we consider that the therapist, like everyone else, wishes to put the trauma behind him or her once the health crisis is over. The very traumatic nature of a life threatening illness, the wish and need to deny the possibility of impairment or death, the need to adjust to what can be profound changes in one's self-concept, as well as the fear for one's professional status and livelihood are all factors that make this topic a difficult one for anyone to live through, much less write about. In fact, I could only find nine articles that had been written from personal experience.2(Abend, 1982) ; (Dahlberg, 1980) ; (Dewald, 1982), (Goldberg, 1984) ; (Kreichman, 1984) ; (Lasky, 1990) ; (Little, 1967) ; (Morrison, in press) ; (Schlesinger-Silver, 1982) ; (Weinberg, 1988). Thus, we do not know how most therapists manage during such a period in their lives. At one extreme, we do have reported instances of therapists who unfortunately coped with the magnitude of their illness in a manner that was very destructive to their patients. They not only