Abstract
In this text, I have wished to convey how a psychodynamic approach with patients facing cancer-illness, is likely to meet the needs of a great number of cases. By psychodynamic, I mean the transferential approach of trauma, such as was decisively investigated by Ferenczi, D. W. Winnicott, etc….
The specificity of this therapeutic approach, as well when meeting the patient, as throughout the treatment, enables the actual trauma of illness, beside its destructive consequences, to contribute a life – and hope – enhancing experience. Providing the clinician’s listening is based on the working-through of his / her own trauma, it may furthermore bring into reach those traumata of early bonds – such as are transgenerationally or historically induced – allowing the therapist to adjust to (tune into) the urge (call) for being and growth of an unclaimed-for child, and be willing to join in, at the borders between life and death, for a journey through – and out of – breakdown.