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This is an important and evocative book of essays about the psychoanalytic psychotherapy of cancer patients, who are suffering dire illness and facing death. Written and edited by Norman Straker with additional chapters by coauthor colleagues, he brings to bear valuable knowledge and therapeutic skills based on his thirty-five years of professional activity in the discipline of psycho-oncology, a subspecialty field of which he was a founder. The book's content derives from observations by Straker from clinical practice with cancer patients and their families, his ongoing annual discussion group at the American Psychoanalytic Association, and supervision of residents and fellows at cancer hospitals, consultations with oncologists, and lectures at psychoanalytic institutes and medical schools. He provides clarifying commentary on psychoanalytic case reports written by colleagues who had presented their work originally at the discussion group, and on two personal memoirs by psychoanalysts who had come back from the brink after multiple life-threatening illnesses.
The book's twelve chapters elaborate Straker's conviction that there is a need to address the universal symptom of death anxiety, which exists not only throughout humanity at large but is of particular significance in the medical community, where it touches on the work of specialists (medical as well as psychological) treating dying/end-of-life/cancer patients. The situation of these patients differs markedly from that of neurotic patients who are anticipating cure, in that dying patients are suffering a “unique life crisis.” The approach for them utilizes basic psychoanalytic principles dedicated to their special circumstances, whereby they can still have their emotional needs met. The care involves a flexible,