The dying psychotherapist.

A previously unpublished paper by a dying psychotherapist describes the therapeutic use of the ensuing grief reactions of five patients to his terminal illness to help them deal with the effects of their previous losses, deprivations, and abandonments. Follow-up interviews with these patients and their subsequent psychotherapists shed light on the efficacy of such therapeutic efforts, the character of the communication of the terminal illness, the transference and countertransference reactions that interfered with the inevitable separation, and conclusions by previous authors regarding patients' reactions to the deaths of their therapists.