Thirty per cent of the general practitioner's patients suffer from functional illnesses, and the other seventy per cent are also influenced by emotional disorders; yet the organic tradition in medicine causes physicians more or less to despise patients with psychogenic symptoms or to treat them wrongly. Such patients should be induced to discuss their emotional problems freely. Often such communication alone is very helpful. 'It is a good rule for the physician to listen rather than to talk; to give advice on important emotional matters is dangerous.' In severer cases the patient should be sent to a specialist for 'major psychotherapy'.