In Facing Cancer and the Fear of Death: A Psychoanalytic Perspective on Treatment, Dr. Norman Straker proposes that "death anxiety" is responsible for the American society's failure to address costly futile care at the end of life; more specifically, doctors default on the appropriate prescription of palliative care because of this anxiety. This leads to unnecessary suffering for terminally-ill patients and their families and significant distress for physicians. To address these challenges in the culture of medical education, increased psychological support for physicians who treat dying patients is necessary. Additionally, physicians need to reach a consensus regarding the discontinuation of active treatments. Psychoanalysts have traditionally denied the importance of death anxiety and report relatively few treatment cases of dying patients in their literature. This book offers multiple treatment reports by psychoanalysts that illustrate the effectiveness and value of a flexible approach to patients facing death. The psychoanalytic reader is expected to gain a greater level of comfort with facing death and is encouraged to consider making themselves more available to the ever-increasing population of cancer survivors. Further, psychoanalysts are encouraged to be more useful partners to the oncologists that are burdened by the irrational feelings of all parties.
Table of Contents INTRODUCTION Norman Straker MD MEDICAL SECTION Chapter One: Where We Are Now The Avoidance OF Death, Its Consequences to Our Patients, Families, Medical Students, Young Physicians. Norman Straker MD Chapter Two: A Psycho Oncology Fellow's Perspective On Facing Death David Yuppa MD & Norman Straker MD Chapter Three: Confronting the Fear of Death: Trying To Detoxify Norman Straker MD Two Memoirs Dan Birger MD, Hillel Swiller MD PSYCHOANALYTIC SECTION Chapter Four: The Denial Of Death by Psychoanalysts Norman Straker MD Chapter Five: Finding Meaning in Death: Terror Management Among the Terminally Ill Molly Maxfield, Tom Pyszczynski & Sheldon Solomon Chapter Six: The Psychoanalytic Literature On The Treatment Of Dying Patients Norman Straker MD Chapter Seven: An Update In The Psychoanalytic Treatment Of Cancer Patients Facing Death Norman Straker MD CASE PRESENTATIONS SECTION Chapter Eight: "That The Darkness Is About To Pass" The Treatment Of a Dying Patient Abby Adams Silvan PhD Chapter Nine: Guidelines to Live By and Rules To Break John W. Barnhill MD Chapter Ten: "Titration Of Psychotherapy For Patient And Analyst" Alison C Phillips MD Chapter Eleven: Psychotherapy With A Hospitalized Patient Dying Of Cancer M. Philip Luber MD Chapter Twelve: Being a Cancer Patient In Analysis, While Continuing To Work As An Analyst Patricia Plopa PhD CONCLUSION: Norman Straker MD References Index About the contributors
