The family physician as a "therapeutic instrument"

The doctor-patient relationship is the matrix of the family physician's diagnostic-therapeutic activity. To enhance the curative potential inherent in this relationship, the physician has to be able to make contact with the person in the patient. To achieve this, the physician must develop his potential for empathic observation, empathic listening, and introspective self-awareness. The use of these skills in a non-judgmental, non-condemning, and non-manipulative climate creates an optimum therapeutic setting. Rather than focusing upon the body of knowledge available in the behavioral sciences, or upon the pursuit of learning "psychiatry" or "psychotherapy," the family physician should first develop his own personal skills. He should then apply them to his own patients, in his own setting, in order to discover the therapeutic approaches appropriate to this patients and their problems. The psychiatrist, psychologist, or any other behavioral scientist can be most helpful to the family physician if he is prepared to aid him in his own discoveries rather than attempt to teach him the accumulated knowledge from his own field.