Failure and recovery: a mythic approach to treatment issues in hospitalized psychiatric patients

A discussion of "Ttreatment Problems of the Hospitalized Physician" by W. W. Meissner, S. J., M.D. and Peter Wohlauer, M.D. Both Camus, in The Fall, and Conrad, in Lord Jim, have elaborated their own mythic versions about what happens to someone who has failed or fallen from grace. Hospitalized psychiatric patients have in some sense fallen from grace, most poignantly if they are physicians. The therapist who attempts to help them recover is on the horns of a dilemma. If he takes the pessimistic point of view implicit in Conrad's story, he will try to cure or at least mitigate the basic flaw which he believes is responsible for the failure thus risking a protracted and possibly pointless regression. On the other hand, if he ignores the tendency that some one who has fallen from grace has to recover in his own way-the theme depicted by Camus-his own self-esteem as a therapist will be in jeopardy and he himself may end up as the failure.