[Therapeutic problems in chronic suicidal patients].

Reported is the case of a chronically suicidal female patient who, in one of her attempts at suicide, had incurred permanent injuries to her lower extremities. The therapeutic problems were focussed on specific aspects of transference and counter-transference and, above all, an uncontrolled rage which was actualized perpetually by her physical handicap. Her destructive aggression resulted in severe stress upon the staff members and inequitable danger to her fellow patients so that her treatment had to be discontinued and subsequently resumed at another institution. It proved to be particularly important that the patient, after having been granted the freedom to leave the ward at her own discretion, had the possibility of imagining a renewed attempt at suicide by throwing herself from a hospital balcony, until she finally reached the beginning of a reorientation of her life.