Introduction

Memories of our own losses, our own illnesses and near death experiences are inevitably brought up by patient material. At these times we acutely experience our own vulnerability. Paul Lippman argued for the protection of fantasy regarding death, as M. S. Frommer says, “echoing the Nietzschean conceit that human beings need their illusions to get by”. Our efforts to be with our patients in the immediacy of their attempts to confront mortality and death require us to confront our own feelings and fantasies. The scaffolding for this framework requires a psychoanalysis that theorizes death as central to psychic life; a psychoanalysis that is committed to exploring the ways that mortality shapes subjectivity”. When we face our own real death–whether in a partial sense through retirement, illness, or disability or in the fullest sense we rarely call on colleagues or our professional community to help and support us. The chapter also provides an overview of the key concepts discussed in this book.