The Topic of Cancer: New Perspectives on the Emotional Experience of Cancer

249 Pages·2014·1.31 MB·English

by  Jonathan Burke

THE TOPIC OF CANCER

THE TOPIC OF CANCER
New Perspectives on the
Emotional Experience of Cancer
Edited by
Jonathan Burke
Foreword by Brett Kahr
“Beach Roses” from Atlantis by Mark Doty. Copyright © 1995 by Mark Doty.
Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers.
“Beach Roses” taken from Atlantis by Mark Doty. Published by Jonathan Cape.
Reprinted by permission of The Random House Group Limited.
First published in 2013 by
Karnac Books Ltd
118 Finchley Road
London NW3 5HT
Copyright © 2013 to Jonathan Burke for the edited collection, and to the
individual authors for their contributions.

The rights of the contributors to be identified as the authors of this work have
been asserted in accordance with §§ 77 and 78 of the Copyright Design and
Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in
a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written
permission of the publisher.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A C.I.P. for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN-13: 978-1-78049-113-4
Typeset by V Publishing Solutions Pvt Ltd., Chennai, India
Printed in Great Britain
www.karnacbooks.com
To all whose lives are touched by cancer
Gracious words are a honeycomb,
sweet to the soul and healing to the bones.
—Proverbs 16:24
CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS xi
ABOUT THE EDITOR AND CONTRIBUTORS xiii
FOREWORD xix
Brett Kahr
PREFACE xxv
INTRODUCTION xxxi
Jonathan Burke
PART I: BEARING THE UNBEARABLE
CHAPTER ONE
Freud’s cancer 3
Martin Schmidt
vii
viii CONTENTS
CHAPTER TWO
Understanding the patient with cancer 27
Dorothy Judd
CHAPTER THREE
The emotional impact of cancer on children and their families 49
Anthony Lee and Jane Elfer
CHAPTER FOUR
What the illness may reveal 65
John Woods
CHAPTER FIVE
The ill psychotherapist: a wounded healer 77
Judy Parkinson
CHAPTER SIX
The cancer nurse specialists’ caseload: “contending with
the fretful elements” 93
Anne Lanceley
CHAPTER SEVEN
On survivorship 109
Adrian Tookman, Faye Gishen, and Jane Eades
CHAPTER EIGHT
Palliative care: what, when, and how? 125
Robert Twycross
CHAPTER NINE
The nature of religious/spiritual concerns in addressing the
psychological needs of people with cancer 141
Jonathan Wittenberg
PART II: CONTAINMENT AND CREATIVITY
CHAPTER TEN
Finding creative expression 159
Carole Satyamurti
CONTENTS ix
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The cancer memoir: in search of a writing cure? 177
Anne Karpf
INDEX 203