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Every patient in some sense is a suicide risk. When a member of a therapeutic group takes his life, this traumatizes the other members and the therapist. The ability to master such a trauma depends on the strength of the ego, the extent of environmental support, and the significance of the trauma to each individual. Conditioning by past experience may better enable the ego to deal with present excitation, while fantasy and anticipation help the individual resolve the trauma. The trauma produces a sense of helplessness, and passive dependence ensues with an exacerbation of oral traits. Thus in a psychotherapeutic group when a suicide has occurred, dependence on the therapist increases. Old symptoms reappear along with a loss of ability to accept interpretations. The therapist, although aware of his group members' potential as suicide risks, tends to react to the event as a personal failure, a sign of professional inadequacy, as well as with personal grief. Examination of the countertransference may reveal latent hostility to the victim, leading to more guilt. As a consequence—and in defense—the therapist may feel a recrudescence of archaic fears of death, magical thinking, fantasies of retaliation, and the compulsion to help other patients. Similarly, the patients' defenses may include an objective and intellectual attitude toward the occurrence or resistance shown by silences, absences, and digressions, although identification with the deceased and fear of contagion may, at the same time, lead to increased willingness to accept deeper interpretations. Since the suicide expressed hostility and revenge, each group member sees it on a primitive level as directed against himself and has guilt feelings over his own hostility, similar to what a child feels at the birth of a sibling.