Psychotherapy, a concept for the nonpsychiatric physician.

Patients tend to repeat with their physician, as with other significant people in their lives, their earlier previous patterns of behavior. The physician as well as the patient is involved in the physician-patient relationship. He will tend to respond to his patients in accordance with his earlier life experiences and his characteristic repetitive behavioral pattern. For both physician and patient, the relationship between them extends beyond the immediate reality situation. Psychotherapy is the utilization of psychological measures in the treatment of sick persons and the deliberate utilization by the physician of the physician-patient relationship for the benefit of the patient. The kind of psychotherapy that is practical and utilizable by the nonpsychiatric physician is that which uses education, reassurance, support and the management of the patient's problems either directly or indirectly or through the intermediary of other people or agencies. The symbolic aspect of the physician-patient relationship is based essentially on the fact that a sick person, because of his anxiety and because of the threat to his physical and psychic integrity, is more dependent and more anxious than he would be if he were well, and therefore he has a correspondingly greater need for the authoritative and protective figure he finds in the physician. Psychotherapy is not directed exclusively to the treatment of flagrantly or obviously neurotic or psychotic patients. It should be and is directed to all sick persons. Limitations in psychotherapy are set by various determinants, among which are the nature of the precipitating factor in the illness, the nature of the sick person, the skill, knowledge and abilities of the physician, and the nature of the physician-patient relationship. In psychotherapy, as in all medicine, the physician should not do anything which may disturb the patient if the disturbance is of no value or if it cannot be followed through with special skills.