How can one circumscribe the discourse of a patient who has been diagnosed for câncer through early detection techniques?
Based on two clinical cases, the idea is discussed here of a traumatic effect on the patient upon being informed of the presence of a potentially mortal disease, in this case, cancer. One can observe the reconstruction of the death fantasy with the enunciation of the medical discourse, a return of the figure of non-protective parents. The body is constituted as a “phobogenic” object, that is the projective place of the trauma. The subject identifies with the aggressor, in a process like that described by Ferenczi.
As long as the patient remains in a position of outsider in relation to his/her libidinal body, medical discourse is facilited and the patient becomes hypnotized by the aggressor thus repeating infantile behavior of submission to the bad parents. Deprived of their own bodies, these patients may experience a variety of movements of the drives, and even morbid possibilities may arise.
Cancer; fantasy; identification with the agressor; morbid