The onset of a life-threatening disease is the most common severe trauma that humans face, although this circumstance has received relatively little attention in the psychoanalytic literature. Trauma-focused cognitive behavior therapy dominates the research literature on the treatment of traumatic stress, but its applicability to the treatment of posttraumatic states in the context of a life-threatening illness may be limited.
We have shown that a relational and mentalization-based approach can be effective in ameliorating these states and that the search for meaning soon emerges in the therapeutic process. The inescapability of trauma that emerges from within the body and the associated threat to life may contribute to distress in this context, but also to the need to make sense of the trauma and to find new meaning in life.
Psychotherapeutic approaches developed by our team for the treatment of individuals facing a life-threatening illness will be described, as well as their broader implications for psychoanalytic approaches to the fundamental problem of finitude in human life.