Psychotherapies for the person with HIV disease

Work with patients with HIV infections demands the highest degree of professional skill, empathy, and self-understanding on the part of the therapist. He or she must be an excellent diagnostician, must be knowledgeable about the use of medications in a wide array of clinical conditions, and must be willing to confront both psychodynamic issues of the past and realistic medical and social concerns of the present and future. The therapy must be driven not by the disease but informed by the evolving needs, of the individual patient for self-understanding and a sense of enhancing competence. Although decline and death must be confronted during therapy, its center is on living and creating an engaged quality of life "in spite of". To help a person find the sweet-tasting strawberry of life in the face of what would otherwise be an intolerable situation can be one of the most meaningful acts we engage in as therapists.