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My contribution to this panel stems from my intense interest in this whole subject and my strong belief that it represents an all-important trend in psychotherapy. I have given this topic a considerable degree of thought and I appreciate this opportunity to share my observations and ruminations with you.
My first general and somewhat discursive reactions are as follows:
I am immediately reminded of Henry Sigerest, former Professor of The History of Medicine, Johns Hopkins Hospital, who used to say, “Let us begin with the study of healthy man.”
We must stop taking the pulse of weakness; let us begin to take the measure of strength.
The best way to prevent disease is to promote health.
To give analytic priority to the healthy aspect of the patient, we must shift our primary allegiance from Aesculapius, the God of Medicine, to Hygeia, the Goddess of Health.
Too many psychoanalysts are oriented only to pathology, and know the signs of disease better than the signs of health.
A study of pathological states is instructive and necessary, but much can be learned, too, from health.
Centuries of conditioning, and all the age-old associations of the doctor as a magic healer constantly get in the analyst's way. Our patient is by his upbringing inclined to emphasize his disease, to justify his going to a doctor. When he first consults us, he expresses either explicitly or implicitly the well-worn medical cliché, “Well, Doctor, I am putting myself in your hands.” Or the doctor may anticipate him and say, assuringly or assertively, “Just put yourself in my hands.” The analyst concerned mainly with health rather than disease makes it a basic element of his approach, gradually and in good and proper time, to accustom the patient to the idea that his life is in his own hands. Such an analyst is guided by Shakespeare's dictum, “Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie, which we ascribe to Heaven,”* and he thereby tries to avoid perpetuating the patient's negation of his inner resources and his co