Melanoma: Its Relationship to Inner Emptiness in a Psychoanalytic Case Study

When the patient came to consult me and ask for psychoanalytic assistance, she was twenty-five years of age and already at an advanced stage of her illness. In view of the malignant nature of the metastasizing melanoma, any hope of recovery was unfounded. The therapeutic relationship developed into the psychoanalysis of a personality which had been severely disturbed in infancy, whereby the patient was now suffering from an organically spreading disease. Concerning the therapeutic result of the 300 therapy sessions over a period of two years, it is the writer's belief that the patient's life was prolonged and her physical suffering was considerably diminished. By way of illustration, the patient hardly needed to take analgesics at all

This more or less objective result is, however, not as important as the subjective psychic benefits which the patient seemed to have gained from the therapy. We succeeded in elaborating a relatively coherent picture of the psychogenesis of the cancer. Although the following sections deal primarily with the difficulties that the patient and therapist had with each other, this should not obscure the fact that the patient went through a genuine process of self-recognition. For me the therapeutic work I did with this patient proved to be a rewarding experience, as I was able to gain insight into the interplay