TRAUMATIC LOSS OF A GROUP MEMBER AND ITS IMPACT IN A PSYCHOANALYTIC GROUP-THERAPY

This report describes a psychoanalytic group therapy during which one female group member left shortly after the beginning because of cancer , and died some time later. We focus the therapeutic processes, and pa rticularly the end phases of the remaining nine members of this first group generation. Nearly all female members showed some degree of nega tive reaction. They displayed crises with anxiety, depressive mood, so matization and hypochondriacal fears. We perceived orally-regressive d emands and doubts about the value of therapy. These reactions were for a particular group member the stronger, the more the deceased group m ember was a figure of identification. In this case, older female group members were particularly concerned. Female patients with more severe ego-structural deficiencies were also endangered considerably. The th erapeutic handling of this phenomenon, scarcely mentioned in literatur e, is touched upon. An open discussion of the themes sickness, death a nd dying is inevitable, but is usually met by considerable resistances .