Word: patient
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...workers . . . they're anxious to apply their theories where theoretical knowledge is almost an impediment. Total naivete is worse, however. Some students start working from voyeuristic interest, but that quickly drops out. Adequate supervision stops that. I'm talking about the kind of person who feels that if this patient could only realize it's silly to keep banging his head against the wall, he'd stop. We had had some like that, and they do pose a major problem, but eventually, through group pressure, they are ready to become case-aide workers...
...ones who have a smattering of theoretical knowledge get hung up on interpretations instead of listening to the patient and relating to him as a person. Successful case-aides react naturally to a patient and bring things back to the group to find out what they're about. Frequently they are being therapeutic without doing therapy. They try to figure out the patients, but as people, not as cases...
After six weeks, then, the patient isn't getting well. He is still sitting behind a newspaper during the hour. He still says, "Aah, I can't see you because I'm gonna play poker." You go see him after five weeks of visits, after having brought him a little gift, and he's in bed and he just doesn't want to see you. And this has to be understood--as a rejection, or as a fear of closeness, or as an invitation to get into...
...have to come to grips with this, and the case-aide's intentions are no longer the meaningful variable in dealing with the patient's experience of the situation. They are meaningful in terms of keeping the case-aide working with the patient, and they are meaningful to the patient, I guess, in terms of the fact that the case-aide keeps working in spite of the rejection, but in terms of curing someone, the inner conviction, by God, I'm going to help this person, itself is not enough...
...weeks, we begin to hit a puzzlement, a wondering at the loss of omnipotence, and maybe you begin to get a flaking out. Some people begin to drop from the group; they get discouraged. Three weeks in a row the patient hasn't wanted to see them. They decide the case is incurable, this is a lousy deal, and they drop...