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With every mistake we must surely be learning
George Harrison [1]
But when we find that what is happening is contradictory or confused or isn't doing what we expect, then we should change our thoughts to reflect what is happening. And in simple situations we do. When it comes to things that matter to us, though, it seems we generally don't. Now this is rather odd, because the things that matter are where we ought to be especially coherent.
David Bohm [2]
This paper will deal with something that matters: the difficulties physicians face in making the changes necessary to their ways of thinking in order to achieve better therapeutic results.
I will first devote some space describing my interview with David Bohm in 1984 in Jerusalem. At that time, I was a full time child psychiatrist in pediatric oncology in Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem. I used to spend a lot of time working with a young social worker. With her I used to see the families of the children in treatment. One day she told me, given what I was always telling her, that I should meet her uncle who was David Bohm. I remembered him from my high school physics text books. He was a theoretical physicist who later developed an interest in and also explored basic issues on psychological and existential problems. My insistence that I only read his papers did not help