Beyond Medicine: Healing Power in the Doctor-Patient Relationship

Abstract

Healing power in the doctor-patient relationship is addressed to physicians in physical health care and to medical students but is of equal importance to dentists, social workers, nurses, and teachers in the field of physical health care. The presentation points up that in the relationship between physician and patient certain phenomena occur that are comparable to responses in the relationship between the psychoanalyst and analysand, such as transference and countertransference. This indicates that the physician in physical health care in effect is involved in some kind of psychotherapy. Aspects of the art of medicine are described. Emphasis is on the potential for patients' physical health improvement—placebo effect—when the providers' perception extends beyond focus on physical symptoms and disorders and includes attention to the patients' psychological and emotional needs.