[Remarks on the physician-patient relationship with cancer patients. Prerequisites, function, and goal of so-called Balint groups in an internal-oncological department].

Abstract

Drawing on their experience with their own cancer patients and with the Balint Group in the Oncological Department of Zürich's University Hospital, the authors describe the special problems arising in the doctor-patient relationship in this field. They show how the diagnosis of cancer can give rise to a feeling of sudden and complete object loss in the patient, thereby confronting the doctor with his own fear of death. The mobilization of archaic defence mechanisms in both the doctor and the patients can lead to an insoluble double-blind situation unless the doctor is able to give up his defence position and thus make it possible for the patient to give up his own fear of death and to accept the nature of his illness. The authors show how the doctor can break through the isolation of the patient in whose body-ego an archaic bad inner-object has been activated by the cancer, and build up good inner objects for him again. In the last chapter Winnicott's idea the "intermediate area" is shown to shed a new light on the phenomenon of redenial or belief in immortality.