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Claudia Heilbrunn's edited volume, What Happens When the Analyst Dies, is an ambitious and wide-ranging undertaking. Much of the first person narrative in this book is the voice of the patient, an all-too-rare and important contribution. This volume of first person narrative is taking its place among the current volumes concerning the loss of the analyst, analyst aging, illness, and death (Deutsch, 2014; Junkers, 2013). Each author in this edited volume gifts us with engaging, heartfelt, and oftentimes poignant narratives about their own experiences with analyst illness and death, either as patient, subsequent analyst, ill analyst, or an analyst offering support at times of analyst member disability within our organizations,
Longevity seems a point of pride in our profession. Often, hearing of an elective retirement, we feel surprised and wonder why our colleague is stepping back at such a young age. And, as a group, we are in denial about the impact of aging on ourselves and on our patients (Fieldsteel, 1989; Tallmer, 1992). A number of years ago, a then 65-year-old colleague told me that he had been asking his more senior colleagues about how they were managing their practices as they aged and moved toward retirement. After asking three colleagues, the uniform recommendation was to not discuss his plans with anyone, and certainly to say nothing about slowing down his practice, because he would stop getting referrals. He also learned that of the three colleagues consulted, one was living with a recently diagnosed terminal cancer and another had a cancer only newly in remission, and the third had been observed falling asleep during rounds at the hospital. All, in their late 70's, were still accepting patients. (E. C. Levin, personal communication, March 28, 2005).
All analysts and therapists, all of us, will face death. Despite this, “there is little in analytic training and literature to guide and support the ill analyst facing this dilemma” (p. 215). I would add tha