[Disregard of feelings - an impediment for the development of patient-oriented medicine]

Medicine which considers psychological and social factors to be just as serious as somatic factors meets with obstinate resistance even if "psychosomatics" is part of the official curriculum of many medical schools. Classical psychosomatic studies with a justified claim to be of scientific value, have not changed this situation. Observations of psychosomatics in institutions and in the author's own practice suggest that disdain for emotionality is the basis for rejection of a bio-psychosocial concept. This rejection of emotions finds its unequivocal expression in the physicians' conduct towards patients: the physician showed scant esteem for "soft data". He defines pain for which no organic etiology can be found as "as real" pain and embryos antidepressant medication instead of allowing the patient to "work through" his or her perfectly natural feelings of sorrow, etc. In the light of an example and the literature on "education" it is demonstrated that the childhood of a physicians is held in a state of suppression by the kind of pedagogy which smothers emotions and throttles emotional independence. The future physician then learns to pay attention neither to his own emotions nor to those of his patients. The subsequent lack of respect and empathy towards the patient as an impediment to the development of psychosomatics is discussed, together with possible ways of overcoming these negative influences.