ABSTRACT
The practice of psychoanalytic psychotherapy in a NHS general hospital is unusual and special because psychoanalysis as traditionally practised is private and expensive. Each analyst is paid a fee directly by the patient, and in many cases, this fee is paid whether or not the patient attends the session. The National Health Service is a unique operation, subscribed to by every working person and affording free medical treatment to all. The influence of psychological forces on physical processes in a general hospital is generally unacknowledged because no one understands them or how to use them in the treatment of the whole patient. The diagnosis of cancer itself in particular produces physiological and psychological pain; it produces pain and shock, sometimes experienced simultaneously. The effects of cancer in different parts of the body are due to the significance which different parts of the body have in the brain.
