[Concept of the double as a problem of relationships in problems of leukemia and terminal cancer patients and its appearance in art therapy].
Patients suffering from leukemia or from severe terminal cancer have possibly been impaired with regard to their ego functions even before any manifestation of their disease had occurred. With the outbreak of their illness they often experience an additional imperilment of their ego loundaries. By introjection of the art therapist (or the physician) whom the patients frequently perceive as their double they are able to make an attempt at reconstructing an intact image of themselves and thus to restore intact ego functions. The double, on the one hand, becomes a source of help and, on the other, an exponent of the patient's own nonexistence because he continuously represents the non-ego as well. Pictures painted by leukemia patients in the course of an art psychotherapy illustrate this phenomenon. The confrontation with the double, exhibited in these pictures, allows the working-through of the relationship between the patient and the therapist which is always ambiguous. Thus the coping with grief, to a certain degree at least, becomes possible.
D000328:Adult; D001155:Art Therapy / Q000379:methods*; D001293:Attitude to Death; D001943:Breast Neoplasms / Q000523:psychology; D004532:Ego; D005260:Female; D005619:Freudian Theory; D006801:Humans; D007938:Leukemia / Q000523:psychology*; D015470:Leukemia, Myeloid, Acute / Q000523:psychology; D008875:Middle Aged; D009034:Mother-Child Relations; D009369:Neoplasms / Q000523:psychology*; D009769:Object Attachment; D011369:Professional-Patient Relations; D012649:Self Concept
Das Doppelgänger-Motiv als Beziehungsproblem des Leukämie- bzw. des terminalen Karzinom-Kranken und seine Erscheinung in der kunsttherapeutischen Situation.