Abstract
Psychotherapy, often used with children treated for a solid tumour, is seldom described. We present four examples of such therapies: a mother who refused enucleation for her 7-month-old boy; a boy's jealousy towards his sister who was being treated for a brain tumour; a teenager troubled by his scar; a 7-year-old boy embarrassed by the unconscious memory of his treatment when he was 5 months old. All names have been changed, for reasons of privacy. Psychotherapies aim to help children and parents to cope with the violent experience of having cancer, to recover their freedom of thought and decision-making concerning their life, their place in the family, their body image, their self-esteem, their identity. These descriptions of brief psychotherapy could help paediatricians to gain a more thorough understanding of the child's experience, to improve collaboration with psychotherapists and to confront clinical skills of psychotherapists. © 2000 Cancer Research Campaign
Keywords: child, cancer, psychotherapy, non-compliance, parents, seque1
Full Text
The Full Text of this article is available as a PDF (46.1 KB).
Footnotes
This extensive case has been published in Oppenheim D (1996) L'enfant et le cancer, la traversée d'un exil. Bayard: Paris. I thank the publisher for allowing me to quote excerpts from this case history.