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The number of HIV/AIDS patients continues to grow relentlessly. The Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recently stated that 47,106 new AIDS cases were reported in 1992, and estimates from 52,000 to 61,000 new cases in 1993. As the number of new cases increases, the number of psychotherapists engaged in the care of HIV/AIDS patients grows correspondingly. In 1991 when I first invited members of my psychoanalytic institute to discussions of psychosocial aspects of HIV at a monthly Study Group, only five persons responded. In the Spring of 1993, when Dr. Mark Blechner and I offered four weekly sessions on HIV at the same institute, over 25 responded, suggesting that many more now see HIV patients in daily practice.
In the HIV Study Group we had speakers on varied aspects of HIV, for example, lack of recognition of infection in women, helping deaf people with AIDS, providing housing for the homeless with HIV, neuropsychiatric complications of AIDS, and, of course, the great problem of AIDS and tuberculosis.
All of us professionals, whatever our motivation, have much to learn before working with such a variety of patients. The present generation of psychotherapists may take on HIV patients for various reasons, such as a heightened social conscience, or an interest in working with women and children, adolescents, hemophiliacs, racial minorities, intravenous drug users, homosexuals, heterosexual or bisexual couples with or without children, the chronically ill, and so on. Prior to the HIV epidemic, few psychotherapists