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The following case is an example of an older patient who benefited from a traditional uncovering psychotherapy, her first. She was referred for short-term therapy to help her deal with a host of psychosomatic symptoms, which had led to a total inhibition of her many and varied community activities.
Sophie is a 60-year-old housewife married to a prominent businessman and the mother of three children, two boys and a girl. Her primary symptom was benign positional vertigo, which had forced her to cancel a trip to Israel, among other journeys. She had been infected by a parasite in Mexico three-and-one-half years earlier, which resulted in a seizure at the time, and continuing nausea and dizziness.
She wept profusely in her first session, saying she was terrified of being a burden to her husband of thirty-nine years, who recently had recovered from a twelve-year bout with an immune disease. His attitude was, ‘If you smile, the world smiles back.’ That attitude was no longer working for Sophie. She and Howard had been together since they were 14 years old; neither had had anyone else.
One of the first things I said after hearing her account was that she seemed ‘traumatized’ by everything that was happening to her so quickly (i.e., pancreatitis, followed by gallstones). That word depicted the deeper issues buried beneath the presenting problem. It was not just medical crisis after crisis, but also a sense of personal failure that brought her to psychotherapy.