[Psychotherapy of depressed elderly patients with pathologic grief reaction].

Loss events not sufficiently worked through frequently are the core syndrome of depressive illness in the elderly. The frequency and symptom pattern of pathological grief reactions as well as influencing factors in 155 patients 60 year old or older treated for endogenous, neurotic and reactive depression, are described. Special issues of the psychodynamics of pathological grief reactions in the elderly are discussed; problems of counter-transference are pointed out. The developmental potential in the elderly often is underestimated. Psychotherapy of pathological grief reactions in the elderly offers important and rarely used possibilities.