Facing Cancer and the Fear of Death

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.

Norman Straker, MD, offers an approach for facing death and the treatment of cancer patients based on 35 years of clinical experience. One of the original faculty members of the very first psycho-oncology services under the leadership of Dr. Jimmie Holland at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, Dr. Straker is still engaged in pedagogy and research at the center. He also teaches at Weill Cornell College of Medicine, Mt. Sinai Medical Center, and the New York Psychoanalytic Institute. A psychoanalyst by trade, Dr. Straker has chaired the discussion group, "Psychoanalysis and Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy of Cancer Patients" at the American Psychoanalytic Association for more than 25 years. He is in private practice in New York City.

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