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Article: We All Need a Dose of the Doctor; The healing relationship between patient and physician plays a vital role in medical care.(Cover Story)
- Article from:
- Newsweek
- Article date:
- September 27, 2004
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Byline: Michael C. Miller, M.D. (Miller is editor in chief of the Harvard Mental Health Letter (health.harvard.edu).)
You're the doctor. Your patient feels ill, but you don't have anything curative in your medicine bag. What do you do? That question has long stymied physicians. But as the Hungarian psychoanalyst Michael Balint recognized a half century ago, persistent or mystifying symptoms are not necessarily untreatable. Listen to patients' stories, Balint urged his colleagues. Treat them as friends. They may need a dose of the strongest drug of all: the doctor.
Balint's prescription is as timely today as it was in the 1950s. A founding insight of ...