Relationship to Medicine

The relationship to medicine is rarely neutral. It is charged. In some people with blind hope, in others with deep mistrust, in most with a mixture of both — depending on how desperate they are right now, how much relief they have already experienced, how often they have been disappointed.

And yet what you bring to the doctor is never just your body. It is an entire inner attitude. A way of dealing with authority. A way of dealing with the unfamiliar thing that stirs inside you. A way of dealing with your own responsibility for yourself. Some people hand everything over — the body, the interpretation, the decision — into the hands of the white coat. Others distrust every prescription and every diagnosis. Both stances look like the opposite of each other. In truth they have the same core: they are an expression of your relationship to yourself.